Notti messicane

The Gay Desperado came out during that short period when every studio had an opera star under contract giving the American movie going public a little culture more or less. The roles these people had were somewhat limited and the vogue passed painlessly enough with people like the star of this film Nino Martini going back to their first loves of the grand opera and the concert stage.

Jesse Lasky discovered Martini and used him on and off in films of varying quality, sometimes only as a guest artist. The Gay Desperado was his attempt to launch Martini as a full fledged star with a role as a singing radio entertainer captured by Mexican bandits. This also enabled Martini to use his accent without it being too noticeable.

Like Harry Cohn at Columbia with Grace Moore, Lasky and his producing partner Mary Pickford gave him full support and his biggest support was hiring Rouben Mamoulian as director. Mamoulian who was successful on the stage as well as film was able to tone down the overacting necessary for an opera singer and make it acceptable for film.

The Gay Desperado also has one gay and witty script involving some Mexican bandits who fall somewhere between the evil Goldhat of The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and the noble Cisco Kid. Leo Carrillo after listening to American radio reporting and films glamorizing American gangsters thinks its time his group got up to date in their methods.

One night because Carrillo is a music lover he raids the local radio station and captures Martini who is giving a radio concert. Later on to get up to date Carrillo and his gang go in for kidnapping which was big in the Thirties starting tragically with the Lindbergh baby. Heiress Ida Lupino and the boy she was running away with to Mexico, James Blakely. A few cadenzas out of Martini and Ida forgets all about this rather arrogant young fathead she was running away with.

An American gangster and his mob, Stanley Fields horn in on the kidnapping and soon after American detective Paul Hurst is hot on everybody's trail. Pretty soon Leo is thinking that the American gangster style isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Nino Martini's career in film lasted pretty much as long as his fellow opera singers though this film garnered deservedly good critical reviews and public reception. He introduced the song The World Is Mine Tonight which later was revived by Mario Lanza. Probably without that accent he might have tried some of the familiar operettas that were being done at the time and be better known by audiences today.

The Gay Desperado with its good spirit of satirical fun still holds up well for today's audiences. Pity it's not shown more often.

An enjoyably lunatic film, from a revered director. Somehow an amateur opera singer gets entangled with a chaotic group of Mexican bandits, just as they decide to modernise their operation and turn themselves into American-style gangsters.

The director left his mark with some classy desert photography, and engineers some hilarious set pieces. Highlights include the hi-jacking of a radio show during a girl group's rendition of 'Lookie Lookie Lookie, Here Comes Cookie' (they continue to perform with their hands up), a bungled firing squad, Nino Martini underneath the world's largest sombrero, Martini singing in handcuffs, and the entire gang guarding Ida Lupino. Mischa Auer shows his expertise at quirky roles as Diego, totally silent save for a single line, the longest in the film, where he becomes the gang's conscience. The interplay between Leo Carrillo's eternal optimist, and Harold Huber's pessimistic second in command is great.

Martini's performance is engaging, and he's not afraid to laugh at himself, but his English is too poor for the film to come over properly. It is never explained why Mexican bandits, and indeed Mexicans generally, are so enraptured by Italian opera. It also drags a little - it might easily have ended before Stanley Fields' gang of Robinson and Raft lookalikes even appear.

The film is undeniably minor, and the beginning of Mamoulian's decline - it is certainly can't compare with Becky Sharp or Queen Christina. It has some of the candy floss feel of Love Me Tonight, but none of that film's subtlety and far less wit. But it's got a nice feel to it.

Not that I have tried hard, but it's difficult to get any information on the girl group, who reappear later on the radio. They deserve to be remembered.

While watching this delightful farce, I was surprised to notice that Leo ("Braganza") Carillo's leather cuffs are each decoratively studded with a large swastika. This is, of course, a ubiquitous ancient sacred symbol which had only positive connotations before the Nazis appropriated it, but by the time this movie was made, it certainly had political implications. Was costume designer Omar Kiam merely employing a local graphic motif, or was he slipping in a pro-fascist symbol in the same way that SubGenius sympathizers placed the face of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs almost unnoticeably in the background of David Letterman's and Pee Wee Herman's original stage sets?

In a rather bizarre opening scene, a room full of Mexicans are at the theater watching a gangster film. It's odd because all the men have huge sombreros (hats) on--making it practically impossible for anyone to see the film. Suddenly, a fight breaks out and Leo Carrillo's gang takes on the rest of the audience. In a panic, the theater owner has Chivo (Nino Martini) take the stage and begin singing, as he has an amazingly beautiful tenor voice. The fight stops almost immediately, as everyone (especially Carrillo) is in love with the voice. I usually hate this sort of singing, but I also was amazed--he was that good.

Afterwords, Carrillo announces that Chivo MUST join his gang--or else. Given little choice, Chivo agrees and the next thing you know, Carrillo and his gang take over a local radio station and force everyone to listen to Chivo's operatic stylings! As the gang makes a getaway (after all, the police are coming), the come upon two young people and kidnap them (one, by the way, is a young Ida Lupino, who plays Jane). Chivo is smitten with Jane and makes an amazingly awkward play for her--it's a scene you just have to see to believe.

In the meantime, Carrillo goes in search of an American bandit, Butch. Carrillo mistakenly thinks that American bandits are like the ones featured in gangster films and wants Butch to teach them how to act like these film crooks! So how does all this get resolved? Does Chivo get to leave the gang? What about Lupino and her now ex-boyfriend? And does the gang become more Americanized--with gang members who act more like Jimmy Cagney and Edward G. Robinson? Tune in yourself to this silly yet strangely enjoyable B-movie.

Pluses are Nino Martini's amazing voice, cute supporting characters and a light and silly atmosphere. Minuses are Nino Martini's almost constant singing--a little went a very long way. In addition, the script is basically fluff. Enjoyable fluff, but still fluff.

This is, as others have pointed out, a lovely film in many ways.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the Tucson, AZ landscape as it was some 80 years ago. This appears to have been filmed in the area in which Columbia Pictures built a whole 1860s town for the movie "Arizona." On a personal note, I can look eastward from my back yard and recognize the mountains and the terrain that has been preserved as a county park.

The correction I need to make is the use in various reviews of the Spanglish non-word "bandito" (created to rhyme with the product name Frito) in every place where the correct word, readily found in any Spanish dictionary, would be "bandido."