La grande strada bianca

The plot is really nothing more than boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, but it's enough of a framework to present an almost non-stop catalogue of great Irving Berlin songs. The music itself is all that is needed to make this a grand entertainment; the litany of classic Berlin standards includes the title song, "Now It Can Be Told", "Everybody's Doing It Now", "Easter Parade" and many others, performed by Twentieth-Century Fox's stock musical players Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche, as well as Jack Haley (who does a great comic rendition of "Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning") and a young, vibrant Ethel Merman, singing, amongst others, "Blue Skies" and "My Walking Stick". All in all, a wonderful "escape" film.