Customer Reviews

The Great Caruso [VHS]

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Made in 1951, this bio of the legendary Enrico Caruso is a treat for opera lovers. Though the script and acting are on the corny side, it's thoroughly enjoyable, and a wonderful filmed record of Mario Lanza, in top form, singing a wide variety of music.

There are scenes that will delight, some are brief, and some are of the complete aria, from the temple scene in "Aida" to a terrific "Vesti la Giubba"...my favorites are the "Rigoletto" quartet, and the "Lucia" sextet. Amazing music, beautifully performed.

Dorothy Kirsten acts and sings the soprano parts well, and Ann Blyth, who plays his wife, gets her turn to sing with "The Loveliest Night of the Year".

This is a film I rent every once in a while, and like more with each viewing. Lanza's voice was extraordinary, though his talent was misused and abused by Hollywood, and scorned by the "purists", who ruled the opera world in those days. How times have changed. There is hardly a great singer today who hasn't made a "pop" recording. Lanza's voice lives on, perhaps appreciated in the truest sense as a singer more now, than in the '50's when he was a "star".

Mario Lanza displays his supurb talent in this music filled video and if you aren't already a fan "The Great Caruso" will make you one. The musical selections in this video are unsurpassed. A video you will watch over and over.
Beverly J Scott author of Righteous Revenge

I have been in love with this movie since first seeing it in the theater when I was a child. I am watching it again today, and it is still very good. I am moved by his singing like no one else's. The movie has so many musical numbers, it is wonderful. I just wonder why there was never a sound track from the movie, at least I have never been able to find it. The Ava Maria number still brings tears to my eyes!

The plot of this movie is loosely based on the life of the world-famous Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso. If this were all this movie had to commend it, it would be a pleasant diversion. But the real virtue of this movie is that Caruso is played -- and sung -- by an equally great tenor, Mario Lanza. Lanza was one of the greatest tenors of the 20th century. Unfortunately, many critics have tended to dismiss Lanza because they accepted MGM publicity which portrayed Lanza as a gifted but largely self-taught amateur. Gifted Lanza most definitely was -- with a spectacular voice that comes along only every fifty years or so -- but, contrary to studio publicity, he also had formal training. Lanza's voice is in top form in this movie. Watch this movie, listen to Lanza sing, and hear the voice of a truly great tenor.

I really enjoyed this film, and would give it more stars if I could. Mario Lanza has such a beautiful and heavenly voice.

He is also a great actor as well. A great movie about the life of the Great Caruso. Well worth watching.

This movie can truly be called life-changing. It certainly changed my life; I was quite ignorant of opera before a chance viewing of the film on television introduced me to this greatest of all musical genres. As it turned out, I was in illustrious company! For the number of singers inspired by this movie includes many of the biggest operatic stars of the last 30 years: Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti, Nucci, Hvorostovsky, and Alagna - to name but a few.

It's easy to pinpoint the reason for The Great Caruso's lasting impact: Lanza. His vibrant personality overflows in practically every scene, and his singing is for the most part perfection itself. He *is* the film. This is, after all, a movie that is neither distinguished directorially nor in terms of its screenplay. Its scenario, in fact, bears little resemblance to the real Caruso's life, and the film is unashamedly corny in the grand tradition of Hollywood musicals. And yet none of this gets in the way of what Caruso's own son, Enrico Jr, called "vocally and musically [...] a thrilling motion picture." The success of the film, Enrico Jr, went on to declare, was due entirely to Lanza.

Essentially the film provides Mario with a solid framework against which to sing some of the greatest arias, duets and ensembles that have ever graced a single movie. He's assisted by an extraordinary who's who of operatic talent: mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom, baritone Giuseppe Valdengo, bass Nicola Moscona, tenor Gilbert Russell, and sopranos Dorothy Kirsten, Marina Koshetz, Lucine Amara, and Olive May Beach. (Oddly, MGM failed to credit some of these singers, and at the same time deleted a fascinating rehearsal scene from Rigoletto with soprano Jarmila Novotna.)

Vocally and stylistically, Lanza is in brilliant form, producing easily the most ravishing singing of his three films to date. Solo highlights include a fine La Danza, a superb Vesti la Giubba, exciting snippets of Cielo e Mar and the second half of Che Gelida Manina, a moving Ave Maria, and the most rapturous of his four known renditions of Because. Among the duet and ensemble work the Sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor, extracts from the Santuzza/Turiddu duet from Cavalleria Rusticana, the Quartet from Rigoletto, and the Finale from Marta (meltingly phrased by Lanza) stand out. "The singingest movie ever made," enthused one movie historian

The distinguished Austrian character actor Ludwig Donath provides excellent acting support as Mario's manager, while Dorothy Kirsten and Ann Blyth are the nominal leading ladies. In her only film appearance, Miss Kirsten is wooden as an actress, but acquits herself well in the singing department. Ann Blyth is an endearing Dorothy Caruso. As an actor, Lanza does what he can with the vignette-like nature of the script, capturing - as Newsweek would later opine - the "personal mannerisms of the immortal Caruso". While some commentators have complained that Mario's Italian accent in the film seems to come and go; in fact, his sporadic adoption of a "foreign" accent makes sense, since he only employs it when he is speaking in English. At other times, when his character is supposedly speaking in Italian to his fellow countrymen, he drops the accent. Logical!

The Great Caruso loses none of its magic on repeat viewings. Pavarotti has said that he watches it "every year" - true testament indeed to the enduring genius of Lanza. As Enrico Caruso, Jr wrote some 20 years ago, "I can think of no other tenor, before or since Mario Lanza, who could have risen with comparable success to the challenge of playing Caruso in a screen biography."

Well said, Enrico Jnr, and viva il grande Lanza!

I was a kid when this film was released and saw it with undivided attention and was instantly in love with opera music and I still are! Some time later my Grandfather bought 78 rpm disk suite of the movie score and we played interminably. So I'm a sort of addict to this movie.
It was directed by Richard Thorpe, a prolific artisan with 186 films in his account. He has started directing movies in the silent period. He was very versatile, directed Johnny Weissmuller in four Tarzan's chapters.
Between 1951 till 1953 he delivered at least four successful movies: "The Great Caruso" (1951), "The Prisoner of Zenda" (1952), "Ivanhoe" (1952) and "The Knights of the Round Table" (1953). He retired in 1967.

The story is quite simple it follows Caruso's (1873-1921) life since childhood, his first steps as a singer, his jump to fame, his first encounter/disencounter with NYC's opera lovers, his love crash at first sight with Ms Doro, his clashes with Doro's father, his runaway, his triumphal return and love fulfillment.
Is that all? Well... no there is opera music and Mario Lanza outstanding performances. Incredible and unforgettable. Such great arias as "Vesti la Giuba" from "I Pagliacci", "E Lucevan le stelle" from "Tosca", the quartet from "Rigolleto" and more and more till the viewer has seen a full opera introduction.

Ann Blyth is delicious playing Ms Dorothy Benjamin with a very delicate touch reminding me of Audrey Hepburn at her best. Dorothy Kirsten adds her beautiful voice fleshing opera singer Louise Heggar.

Last but not least cinematography in charge of Joe Ruttenber who won four Oscar and was nominated for six more between 1939 and 1961 is luminous.

It is a great film for opera music lovers and general public. Do not miss it!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Mario Lanza was the only tenor, past or present, who could ever have portrayed Enrico Caruso in an English language movie biography. "The Great Caruso," is a biographical travesty and a musical marvel. As biography it followed the absolutely unalterable formula of biopics of the 1940s and 50s. A brash and incredibly talented man grows up destitute, is told he cannot succeed by turning his talent into a career, and, against all odds, he not only succeeds but becomes the greatest that ever lived.

And, oh yes, along the way he meets an adoring little lady who has total faith in his dream and they marry and live happily ever after. Even if you're Al Jolson and happily ever after includes a friendly divorce. Or Cole Porter, and struggling is a synonym for filthy rich and happy is a synonym for gay. In any event, Glen Miller got the treatment, as did Babe Ruth, Benny Goodman, Sigmund Romberg, and Lou Gehrig, among others. These people had wildly different backgrounds and personalities, but into the Hollywood sausage mill they went, only emerging after they'd been chopped, ground, minced, and homogenized into look alike links ready for barbecuing at your local cinema.

It's sad because those lives were all so fascinating, so unique, so unsausage-like! Enrico Caruso, for one, was astounding on many levels. As a youthful (and yes, struggling) artist, he and a young married soprano fell madly in love, lived together for over a decade, and were the parents of two sons, Rodolfo and Enrico, Jr.

During this formative time in his career, Caruso improved dramatically as a singer, firming up his high B and C and actually becoming the great tenor celebrated in the movie. His beloved Ada Giachetti, a fine vocalist and pianist, was almost certainly a decisive factor in his extraordinary vocal improvement. Alas, they never married officially; Ada never divorced her husband, and she had borne him a child whom she was forced to leave behind. None of these facts were slipped into the script.

The only part of Caruso's life that enjoys the movie's sustained attention is the final couple of years, although the picture leaves the impression that it was much longer. The time in question was Enrico's wooing and brief marriage to Dorothy Park Benjamin, a sheltered socialite 20 years younger than the tenor, who bore his third child, a girl.

The reason for this is simple. Dorothy Caruso exerted great influence over the script. Her book, sold to MGM for this film, "suggested" the screenplay. That volume, "Enrico Caruso: His Life and Death," was a hastily written embellishment of her earlier biography, "Wings of Song." Dorothy rewrote her recollection of Caruso's horrible death, and padded the book with transcriptions of a passel of letters written by the tenor. Still, the book is far more honest than anything in the movie. The celluloid life story is so defiantly mendacious that it would have come as no surprise if Caruso ended up a basso profundo.

Ah, but the music. If the suits at MGM took no chances on departing from the rags to riches cliché in its pseudo-biography, they had to be biting their manicured nails at the wall to wall extravaganza of arias and songs, all but a couple in Italian. I doubt any major motion picture prior to "The Great Caruso" boasted so many operatic excerpts, along with a Latin hymn, several Neapolitan songs, and, in English, "Because." (Lanza's second gold record "The Loveliest Night of the Year" was actually sung by Ann Blyth in the movie; Mario does warble a line or two of it a capella to his baby, but then has a coughing fit.)

The decision makers seemed to be doing everything possible to assure that the movie would bomb. Beyond Lanza and Blyth, there were no marquis names in the picture. Instead actual opera singers were cast in important roles, like Dorothy Kirsten's pivotal part as Dorothy's confidante and Caruso's favorite American soprano.

When Caruso sits at a piano in a lovely, also ahistorical, scene with Ann Blyth, he could have done "For You Alone," a shattering love song actually recorded in English by Caruso. Instead, he sings "Surriento." It's sweet, lush, gorgeous, but it's another Italian song and one never recorded by Caruso.

These were incredibly risky choices, and no biographer of Lanza has adequately explained them. Peter Herman Adler was placed in charge of the musical numbers, and he was a serious musician, a friend of Mario's. Between them, it seems, enough influence was mounted to assure that the life of an opera singer was told through, of all things, opera.

The movie was a smash, a record breaker. And make no mistake, if the flick was a must-see in 1951, it was Mario Lanza that everyone knew must be seen - and heard. His performance, his sheer vocal power was the talk of America. "Ya just gotta hear this guy. His voice is so strong it could break glass." That was the buzz. And America queued up to hear this phenomenal talent.

If the word charisma has any meaning, it fits here. What moviegoers experienced, and it was an experience, when they watched and listened to "The Great Caruso," was not perfection of singing technique such as Jussi Bjoerling would have brought, not exquisite thespian subtlety a la Olivier. What Mario Lanza delivered was white hot, masculine passion, unrestrained power, fearless commitment. All this bounty issued without a shred of arrogance, meanness, or high-handedness.

Given the timidity of the Hollywood brass in that era, "The Great Caruso" should never have been made. Somehow, this one time, Mario Lanza got his way, and great music was placed uncompromisingly at the center of a movie about a great singer. The kid from South Philly got to honor the kid from Napoli, and he gave it all he had.

America found out just how much that was. When you view this tape, you will, too.

"The Great Caruso" (1951) stars the great American tenor Mario Lanza in his finest performance. It co-stars Ann Blyth and features some of the finest Opera stars of the era. Richard Thorpe directed and Paramount founder Jesse Lasky produced.

Biopics about singers are always popular - "The Jolson Story" (1946), "The Eddie Cantor Story" (1953), "The Helen Morgan Story" (1957), "Gypsy" (1962), "The Buddy Holly Story" (1978), "Sid and Nancy" (1986), "La Bamba" (1987), "Selena" (1997), "Ray" (2004), and "Walk the Line" (2005) to name a few. But Caruso was the only Opera singer to warrant his own film. Caruso (1873-1921) was an Italian tenor who had a 25 year career from 1895 to 1920 and included 863 appearances at the NY Met, 260 recordings, and a slew of film performances. He was the most famous Opera star of his era, and to this date remains an icon.

Mario Lanza (1921-1959) was born the same year that Caruso died. They were both tenors and both had Italian heritage. Lanza, however, based his career around films rather than the stage. His movie debut was a hit - "That Midnight Kiss" (1949) - and he followed it with "The Toast of New Orleans" (1950) that produced his first million seller - "Be My Love". "Caruso" was his third film, producing two more million sellers - "The Loveliest Night of the Year" and "Because You're Mine". Like his idol, he died early, at age 38.

Many opera stars - Placido Domingo, Joes Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti - credit this film with influencing their career choices.

Although the film is basically Lanza singing one after another of the great Operatic scores, Ann Blyth does get a few minutes of screen time as his love interest. Beautiful Ann Blyth (1928) made more than 20 films before turning her attentions to TV in the late 50s. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in "Mildred Pierce" (1945) and won a Laurel for "The Helen Morgan Story" (1957). Blyth had a beautiful voice, although she was occasionally dubbed, and she was the chief rival to Kathryn Grayson during the 50s.

Carl Benton Reid (1893-1973) is the only other actor to get any significant screen time. He plays Blyth's father. Reid's imposing stature and his stern face made him the great foil as a villain or a protective father in more than 50 films and various TV series.

The film was a hit with critics and the public in a year that had such films as "The African Queen", "A Place in the Sun", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Show Boat", "Alice in Wonderland", "Quo Vadis", "Death of a Salesman" and "An American in Paris".

For Opera fans this is a must have. For anyone who enjoys musicals, this is a must see. For the rest of us, Lanza's voice is so good that you will enjoy the film.

BTW - Jesse Lasky originally promoted Caruso in films in the early silent era, and decades later, his son would co-produce this film.

i saw the movie as a teenager , about fifty years ago. Seeing it again was like he very first time. It is a spectular performance by one of the world's greatest masters. A must see for all lovers of fine classical performances.