Serenata

When this one was released I was still dazzled by the sleek beauty of the line of 1956 Lincoln automobiles. So, in the opening sequence, when Joan Fontaine, with her protege, Vince Edwards (playing a hot-headed boxer), in a "long, low, luxurious Lincoln" convertible (top down, of course), stop by the side of a vineyard where Mario Lanza is laboring (quite without any sign of perspiration, by the way...must have been an unseasonably cool day, despite the blazing sunshine!), to ask directions, I was hooked. The fire-engine red Premiere convertible is as lovingly photographed as the stars and it wasn't until Sarita Montiel, playing Mario's true love, Juana, makes her entrance, that I ceased wishing that resplendent automobile would again appear to do justice to the use of Technicolor (oops!), I mean, Warnercolor, in this soap-with-music.

Sarita, though her list of Spanish language films is quite awesome, never enjoyed much of a career in Hollywood films. (We weren't nearly as accepting of non-Anglo leading ladies back then.) She is just gorgeous in this one and her playing as the fiery and passionate (what else?!?) Juana helped Mario convince us that he was a man who could be snatched from the diabolical and devastating ensnarements of Joan Fontaine's spoiled heiress, Kendall Hale. The introduction of her character, when Mario flees in disgrace to Mexico, permits a scenic and worth-the-price-of-admission tour of Mexican locales.

The music is fairly well presented in this one. Not being an opera connoisseur, I am not qualified to comment knowledgeably on Mr. Lanza's renditions of operatic excerpts, but I have always found his tenor voice to be among the most listenable (So many of them just bleat!), and his constant reprising of the title song throughout this movie did not grow tiresome, at least to these ears.

A side note: Mario's father, quite a dear old gentleman, who had remarried, lived down the street in the Huntington Palisades section of Pacific Palisades, in southern California, where my family owned a home. I frequently saw Mario's Cadillac parked in his father's driveway, but, alas!, never caught a glimpse of the golden-voiced Mario himself, who was, you may be sure, his father's pride and joy.

I really enjoyed this movie. Mario Lanza's voice is so powerful and beautiful - the most emotionally charged voice I have ever listened to. He was God's gift to us with a beautiful powerful tenor voice. His 'Ave Maria' inspires even if you are an ardent Protestant. This man could sing beyond belief. Any one out there with a musical ear let him hear this man's voice - it will exalt you to the heavens.

The story line is good and the acting okay. I found it thoroughly engaging and who could refuse to like this film when Vincent Price is in it. What a class act he is. Voice, presence, poise - this actor had it all. We will never hear a voice like Lanza again. The tenors of today are technically good but they have no heart, soul and emotion although they try very hard. My eyes are moist whenever Lanza sings it is so beautiful. What a joy to hear him sing. "And Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest"!

The story is pretty ridiculous but its all presented lushly with all the big studio trimmings. Gorgeous locations in sumptuous Technicolor and a top flight cast all doing good work. Mario is in fine voice even if he doesn't look his best and sings many beautiful songs full of vigor. The script requires more acting than usually asked of him and he pulls it off well enough although no one would ever mistake him for Olivier. Joan Fontaine checks in with the silky brand of villainy that became her stock in trade once her sweet ingénue phase came abruptly to an end sometime after Letter from an Unknown Woman. Did any actress have a more dramatic change of persona than she from dewy vulnerability to brittle hard edged sophistication in so short a time? Anyway she looks incredible and is a fine balance to the breathtaking beauty of Sarita Montiel. The other standout in the cast is Vincent Price in a part that had anybody else with less flair played it would have been nothing. With the sly humor in his voice he makes his lines memorable and walks off with any scene he's in. If you're a fan of any of the stars well worth the time.

This was the fourth of just 7 starring vehicles for turbulent Italian tenor Mario Lanza; although not his best or most popular (that remains 1951's THE GREAT CARUSO), Anthony Mann was easily the best director he ever had. It was actually Lanza's first film in 4 years, a period marked by the debacle of THE STUDENT PRINCE (1954) where director Curtis Bernhardt decided he had had enough of the star's tantrums, had him summarily fired and replaced by Edmund Purdom (who mimed to Lanza's own singing)!

Anyway, the screenplay here is so predictable that it seems written on autopilot and one is hard-pressed to believe that it was based on a novel penned by hard-boiled noir writer James M. Cain; it comes as no surprise, then, to learn that the film version was heavily bowdlerized! Incidentally, Cain was also behind similar musical soap opera stuff like WHEN TOMORROW COMES (1939) and its remake INTERLUDE (1957) that had equally boasted the services of notable directors (John M. Stahl and Douglas Sirk, respectively) for their transition to the screen! On a personal note, it is unfortunate that, while respected Maltese character actor Joseph Calleia got to work with two of Hollywood's most talented film-makers of that time within the same year, it was only on their least interesting movies: this and Nicholas Ray's HOT BLOOD!; what is even worse is that another Maltese who goes by the name of Joseph Calleia is currently enjoying worldwide fame as a tenor himself - thus endangering his earlier namesake (who died back in 1975)'s own fledgling reputation on his home ground!

The supporting cast of SERENADE is quite good actually: Joan Fontaine (she has the right looks for the role of the bitchy society dame who entraps Lanza in her tangled web but there is next to no chemistry between them!), Sarita Montiel (Mann's wife at the time, she has the role of Lanza's beautiful Mexican redeemer), Vincent Price (a breath of fresh air as the witty, artless impresario), Silvio Minciotti (as Lanza's first restaurateur employer), Vince Edwards (as Fontaine's temperamental prize-fighting pet) and Edward Platt (as the director of Lanza's ill-fated stage debut performance of "Othello" – which he hysterically abandons in mid-aria simply because Fontaine has not turned up to see him!). Similarly histrionic moments occur during a thunderstorm in the Mexican plains (almost evoking John Ford's THE QUIET MAN {1952}!) and when a jealous Montiel (incidentally, she has her own jilted lover to contend with!) loses it by bullfighting a mocking Fontaine at a society party that precipitates an unbelievably contrived climactic traffic accident (with an inevitable happy outcome just as Lanza is about to go live on the airwaves)! To counter such melodramatic (if appropriately operatic) outbursts, perhaps the film's best sequence is the simple and moving one in which Lanza and Montiel enter a Mexican church to pray, and it is here that he regains his self-confidence (having spent some time on the skids and then returned to his roots as a field-worker!) by singing Schubert's "Ave Maria".

Apart from the afore-mentioned "Othello", the film also shows Lanza performing a famous aria from Giuseppe Verdi's "Il Trovatore" (incidentally, I have just acquired Renato Castellani's 10½-hour biopic of the famed Italian composer shot in 1982 for Italian TV with Ronald Pickup in the lead!), as well as 2 new songs in English (one of them 'composed' and played on the piano by Vincent Price and the title tune, which is reprised for the finale). Having mentioned the English numbers just now, it is odd given his proud heritage that, when Lanza is about to leave home early on in search of success (managed by his cousin Harry Bellaver), he treats his paisani to a pop tune – and in a foreign tongue, to boot! By the way, this viewing came via a TCM U.K. broadcast of the Warner Bros. production (albeit screened full-frame).

Apart from Mario Lanza's singing, which is, as always, wonderful, and Vincent Price's performance as a somewhat less than ethical music critic, there is really very little to recommend about "Serenade." Lanza had been a big fan of the original James M. Cain ("Double Indemnity," et. al.) novel for years, and was always pushing to make it while he was at MGM. After he was fired from MGM, he signed with Warners as part of a three-picture deal, with the provision that "Serenade" be filmed first. Jack Warner, who'd been trying to snag Lanza for years, readily agreed.

The script, by the otherwise excellent Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, is a highly bowdlerized version of the book, retaining not much more than the title and character names. The film almost relentlessly exposes Lanza's considerable weaknesses as an actor in a way MGM never did. His singing, by contrast, is some of his best, especially in the scenes from Verdi's "Otello" with Metropolitan Opera great Licia Albanese as his Desdemona, a role she sang often at the Met.

As was his wont, Lanza's increasingly irresponsible, unpredictable behavior cost him the other two pictures in his Warners contract, even though "Serenade" was a box-office success. Apparently, Jack Warner was no more patient with him than Dore Schary had been. How ironic, then, that his last two films, made independently in Italy, were released in America by none other than MGM!