1h 33min | Drama, Musical, Romance | 28 October 1949
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Stars: Wanda Hendrix, Claude Rains, Macdonald Carey, Henry Hull, Elizabeth Patterson, Eva Gabor.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041899/
Watched online, poor print.
This should not count as a music/al; no character in the story performs any music, it all comes from a gramophone.
This small rural town in CT is shown as very backward culturally, and yet not devout enough to recruit a replacement pastor/preacher.
They look down on the visiting (NYC) cityfolk who bought the great house (formerly owned by CR). I think theirs is the only automobile in town, and they don't work, so it's all very contrary to their values.
Yet somehow one of the residents, whose farm has failed due to a bad year for tobacco(?), is auctioning off his possessions, and has a gramophone for sale. The auction attendees protest the very existence of the thing as evil. Our young wife (WH), whose husband (CR) did not attend, gets riled up, and uses the dollar allotted her to buy the gramophone (retail ~$28) with records of Enrico Caruso.
When she gets it home, CR protests like the rest of the attendees, and says he'll dispose of it. But the other interested party (postman/grocer?) arrives, and she arranges to pretend she sold it to him. Instead, she hides it in a nearby cave, and waits until CR goes out of town to play it. The acoustics of the cave/mountain end up broadcasting the music to the town.
There's plenty more to the plot, but I'll stop here.
The star of the show (the young wife) WH, has a brief (25 film) career, with most of her films released '45-'54. I don't really recognize her, and the print was very blurry, but she seemed to do a very good job as the moral woman who wants more from life than what she was born and married into. MC does a good job as the conflicted fiance of the wealthy woman (the visiting cityfolk).
CR is one of my favorites, and he portrays pathetic middle-aged men better than anyone. This is no exception.
Excellent ending: non-committal, yet tidy and full of possibility.
Paramount, dir. Leisen; 7-
