One Night with You * (1948, Nino Martini, Patricia Roc, Bonar Colleano) – Classic Movie Review 5440

Director Terence Young’s 1948 British movie is an Italian-based musical romantic comedy with Nino Martini as Giulio, an Italian tenor serenading a stranger he meets in Italy, English rose Mary Santell (Patricia Roc), while they miss their train, lose all their luggage, are pursued by Roc’s various loved ones and are being mistaken for forgers.

Dull, daft and flat, with a feeble script and naff songs, this cinema soufflé has not got the right quality ingredients and refuses to rise as an unofficial English version of It Happened One Night (1934).

Roc is likeable, a solid rock to build the film on, giving an appealing performance. Italian operatic tenor and actor Martini might have a good voice but as actor an movie star here he leaves you shaken but not stirred. Born in Verona, he appeared in a few movies, such as The Gay Desperado (1936) and Music for Madame (1937), and performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

Charles Goldner plays Fogliati, an incompetent Italian film producer, and Christopher Lee appears briefly as one of his assistants.

Caryl Brahms and S J Simon’s screenplay is based on the play Fugue for Two Voices by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia.

There is slight redemption in Young’s professional handling and the sweet vintage cast, including Hugh Wakefield, Bonar Colleano, Guy Middleton, Stanley Holloway, Irene Worth, Miles Malleson, Willy Fueter, Richard Hearne, Martin Miller, Judith Furse, Stuart Latham, Brian Worth, Andreas Malandrinos, Percy Walsh, John Warren, Cyril Smith, Armand Guinle, Ferdy Mayne and Tristram Butt.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5440

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