This film was one of my favorites when I was in junior high school in the early 60s and a local TV station played it somewhat regularly on their four-o-clock movie, perfect for after school viewing. After that it seemed to vanish forever and I had even forgotten its title until by chance it turned up on Turner classics one day. It's a really fun film, very colorful and full of the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, who is its main subject in what is not a biopic so much as a fantasy about the composer's days as a Russian naval cadet who falls in love in Cadiz, Spain. I've been a fan of the composer even back in those afternoon TV days. I've read his fascinating autobiography "My Life In Music" and have written reviews of many CDs of his works. Don't worry, I'm not going to go on for paragraphs about his life and music. I just want to make two things clear. Rimsky-Korsakov actually was in the Russian navy and as a cadet, did make an almost three year voyage (from late 1862 to May, 1865) on the clipper ship, Almaz and did visit New York and Rio as is mentioned in the film. The ship never docked in Spain and everything else in the film is made up. Secondly, all of the music in the film, even short background music as when the cadets report on deck, is by the composer, that being the March from Tsar Tsaltan.
The audience of the 1940s would have been familiar with most of this music. People in general were much more aware of classical music, at least its big, tuneful hits, than they are today. The most featured music here is from his symphonic suite, "Scheherazade". Its third movement, subtitled "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" was a very popular romantic orchestral number, second only to the finale of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto. Everyone knew "The Flight of the Bumblebee", though few would have known that it came from an opera. Another opera excerpt. "Song of India" had been a huge hit for Tommy Dorsey in a jazz arrangement. The big dance at the party is set to "Capriccio Espagnol", another piece the audience would have known.
It's interesting that this film can be appreciated straight on as a romantic film as many people do, but also can be viewed as a camp classic. After all, it's a post-war 40s over-the-top Technicolor musical and dance fest with colorful costumes and an elaborate Kismet-like finale. It also includes an operatic singing doctor, a villainous prince with a bullwhip and Yvonne De Carlo dancing in exotic costumes. IHere she's seen early in her career when Universal was mainly using her for her looks and featuring her in roles that allowed for exotic costuming. Her next film was "Slave Girl", so you see what she was up against. She managed to escape into film noir and British comedies and, of course, "The Munsters" (1964-1966). In 1971 on Broadway, she introduced "I'm Still Here" in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies". Then there's Eve Arden, who is the real highlight of the film as De Carlo's mother. This was something she wasn't thrilled about, being only fourteen years older. But she has a great time dropping droll and witty comments in her deadpan way as she had been doing since her first film, "Stage Door:(1937). Here she is the life of the party, chewing through scenery left and right and providing the energy that keeps the film going.
The critics hated the film, considering it kitsch totally beneath their consideration, but the public loved it and made it a big box office hit grossing 2.1 million, which would make it the 13th biggest film of 1947. The critics were too hard on such an unpretentious film that wants nothing more than to be entertaining. It had an odd origin back in World War II when the U. S. and U. S. S. R. found themselves unlikely allies against Hitler and American movie studios were shopping around for upbeat Russian material. A pair of producers bought the rights to Rimsky-Korsakov's music from the Soviet government and had screenwriter Walter Reisch write a screenplay. Reisch had been a highly regarded screenwriter in Vienna and at Berlin's UFA, where he often worked with Billy Wilder. Both fled to America when Hitler took power and occasionally continued to work together. Reisch wrote "Ninotchka" and "Gaslight" among many other films. The plan had been for MGM to film it but they lost interest and the would-be producers let the music rights and screenplay go to Reisch. He took it to Universal, who even let him direct it (the only American film he would ever direct).
"Song of Scheherazade" has an outstanding cast who also give it more life and character than one would usually expect. Jean-Pierre Aumont plays the composer with great charm. He never became a big star in Hollywood, but appeared in many films in both America and France including "Lili"(1953)., "Gigi" (1958), "Day For Night" (Truffaut/France) and Merchant/Ivory's "Jefferson In Paris" (1995). DeCarlo was not known as a dancer but had danced in nightclubs since 1940 and was coached by noted dancer Tilly Lesch and was able to handle the balletic finale. Brian Donlevy does a light version of his usual tough guy roles. Lyric tenor Charles Kullman was borrowed from the Metropolitan Opera and is surprisingly fun in his role as the ship's doctor. Child actor Terry Kilburn, now twenty, is Midshipman Loren, whose humorous escapades also enliven the film. Go into this film with expectations of fun and you'll have a good time.
