User reviews

An odd film about the power of music: Claude Rains as an elderly curate bullies his much youngar wife, an uneducated girl he treats like serving maid, but she doesn't mind, until another, younger man enters her life. With him follows a grammophone (1906) with records of Caruso, and that changes her life and that of Claude Rains as well. He becomes jealous of the grammophone, but the more resists and battles against the intrusion of music in his life, the more deeply he will eventually succumb to it.

Claude Rains makes an awesome performance as usual, and the others are good enough but pale in his presence, while the greatest asset of the film is the music. It's not only Caruso, but the score is by Victor Young, and you will never forget that melody. It's a very unusual film for actually making music play the lead of both the story and the character of it, and you will eventually forget the story and the characters but not the music.

Elisha and Abigail Hunt (Claude Rains and Wanda Hendrix) are a most unusual couple in this story circa 1906. He is an older educated man...a bit of a bore, really. She is young but also extremely sheltered...knowing very little of the world outside her extremely conservative Connecticut town. When a newcomer arrives in town (Macdonald Carey), the marriage is thrown for a few bumps, to say the least.

The story is okay. It has some interesting aspects but left me feeling a tad disappointed by the ending which is strongly influenced by the production code. Things just worked out too nicely at the end for it to see very realistic. Not a bad story...but one that seemed in need of a slight re-write.