Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

jacobs-greenwood Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, Noel Coward's play (treated by Lesser Samuels) and songs and the 1933 film was remade into this colorful costumer and musical romance drama for Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy (fans). It received Oscar nominations for its Color Art Direction and Cinematography. The cast also includes George Sanders, Ian Hunter, Felix Bressart, Sig Ruman, Veda Ann Borg, and Herman Bing (among others).In London, 1891, hopelessly romantic Sarah Millick (MacDonald) skips out of her arranged marriage to elope with her penniless Viennese music tutor Carl Linden (Eddy), much to the dismay of her mother (Fay Holden), her dullard foreign minister fiancé Harry (Edward Ashley), and his mother Lady Daventry (Janet Beecher), though her friend Dolly (Lynne Carver) is delighted. Carl & Sari (as he calls her) immediately leave for Vienna where, after she has a chance meeting with Baron Von Tranisch (Sanders), the couple is greeted enthusiastically by Carl's friends Ernst (Curt Bois) and Max (Bressart). The celebration is continued, later, at Mama Luden's (Greta Meyer) restaurant.After a year, the Lindens are still happy and poor. Sari begins to write a letter home to ask for money, but instead ends up offering her services as a singing tutor to a market keeper (Bing) for food. Unable to sell his completed operetta, Carl ends up inadvertently bungling her arrangement. Ernst & Max, who have a penchant for pawning Carl's possession for food & drink, have an idea - play outside the baths in Bonn in hopes of attracting a millionaire's ear. The four of them do just that and, hearing Sari sing Carl's operetta, British Lord Shayne (Hunter) believes that it brings him luck in his card game with the Baron and others. He sends them money to continue but, after the Baron loses to Shayne, he looks out the window and recognizes pretty Sari. The Baron then sends a messenger to take the makeshift band away, to a job working at Herr Schlick's (Ruman) café.Schlick doesn't know what to do with the players until he sees Sari, then he hires her & the others and fires Manon (Borg, barely in two scenes), who'd been the Baron's previous mistress. Even though Sari is never asked to sing, she & Carl are oblivious to the arrangement between Schlick and his regular customer the Baron, who insists that the café owner keep his mistresses employed for his (own purposes &) excellent patronage. When by chance, Harry Daventry visits with his wife Jane (Diana Lewis), the Baron's arrangement becomes clear to Sari, who then quits Herr Schlick. The Baron is naturally furious with the café owner when he learns that his new mistress won't be dining with him, but Schlick tells dishwashers Ernst & Max that the famous (producer?) Herr Wyler (Charles Judels) will be coming to his café that night. The friends tell Sari of it and, seeing a chance to sing Carl's operetta for him, she joins a surprised Carl (who plays the piano there) at Schlick's. But it is Schlick that is surprised when he learns that Wyler really is there, brought by Lord Shayne to hear Sari sing. Just as she's completed singing the operetta, the drunken Baron accosts her, initiating a fatal duel between the master military swordsman and poor Carl.But the show must go on. Sari refuses Harry & Jane's offer to return to London with them; her home is now the place that Carl loved, Vienna. With Wyler and Shayne's help, Carl's opera is produced, performed by Sari to great success, one which is "bitter sweet".The film ends with a fantasy sequence much like an earlier MacDonald/Eddy vehicle, Maytime (1937), does.

jotix100 No wonder Noel Coward had such low esteem of what Hollywood could do to his plays. Judging by what comes out on "Bitter Sweet", Mr. Coward had a case. The problem seems to be in the adaptation of the material. Lesser Samuels took too many liberties with the musical, and in a lot of ways, it seems this is a rework of "Maytime", as other contributors to this forum have expressed.The film had all the right elements going for it, but somehow, this typically English musical is anything but English. W. S. Van Dyke, a director who worked extensively in the genre doesn't appear to have been inspired by the material. MGM gave this film its usual lavish production, yet, this Technicolor film lacks some of the magnificent look the studio gave "Maytime", a black and white movie.Jeanette MacDonald has a bigger role than her co-star. She also has a more passable British accent, whereas Mr. Eddy, who is supposed to be Austrian, doesn't sound credible. George Sanders is seen as the Baron Von Tranisch, a cad who has an eye for spotting good looking women. Ian Hunter, Sig Rumann, and others are seen in supporting roles."Bitter Sweet", while enjoyable, is not one the best films the singing stars duo did for MGM.

raskimono An obvious attempt to rework the studio hit Maytime and to an extent it works. The plot though slight, is not common as it actually tries to follow the trials and tribulations of a starving artistic couple, at least for the first hour. A few classic songs with those famous operatic voices is unleashed occasionally and the comedy is obvious but prudent. George Sanders as the heavy is very good and if not for his voice is almost unrecognizable. This movie contains a grand musical finale with technicolor used to its palest, so to speak with dancers following and trailing Jeanette as she dashes around the stage. Not great, not serious, not intelligent but pleasing, fun and touching.

Greg Couture Saw this film recently on a Turner Classic Movies TV broadcast and was dazzled once again by an incredibly deluxe production number in which the color palette was limited to aquas, subtle shades of pinks and rose, dazzling whites and ivories and that's about it. It's a song, mounted as part of an operetta, "Ziguener" ("The Gypsy"), in which Jeanette MacDonald is pursued over an enormous, multi-level stage by a flotilla of violin-playing, elaborately costumed musicians as she trills her heart out. It's Hollywood extravagance at its most eye-filling, and the gorgeous Technicolor justifies the Oscar nominations for art direction and color cinematography which this film received. M-G-M gave its "Singing Sweethearts," Jeanette and Nelson Eddy, a lovely vehicle with this one and its like will probably never grace a first-run screen ever again. Thank goodness that TCM occasionally exhumes this one from its vault to delight us every once in a while.