Italian filmmaker Carmine Gallone was still in his "operetta" mode when he helmed 1938's Il Sogno di Butterfly (Dream of the Butterfly) Maria Cebotari plays opera diva Rosa Belloni, currently starring in a production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. The plot thickens when Rosa's backstage life begins to mirror the travails of the character she is portraying. The climax comes when Harry Peters (Fosco Giachetti), the American father of Rosa's illegitimate child, returns after four years with his new wife in tow, leading inexorably to a doleful ending both on- and offstage. Critics complained about the substandard photography in Il Sogno di Butterfly, but this might have been due to poor laboratory work.
Erkel
The first Slovakian colour film. A celebration of traditional Slovakian folklore and creativity expressed through a story of young love .
A comedy film taking an ironic view of the bourgeois period prior to the First World War.
Canio and his Comedia dell'Arte troupe tour Italy. His wife Nedda meets a young cadet and they plan to elope. He tries to leave her when he finds how important she is for his husband, but a rejected trouper interferes. As jealous Canio suspects the truth the tragedy approaches. The film was partly made in Ufacolor.
Baracs Pista, engineer at the construction site of a railway line near the Korláthy estate, falls in love with Rolla, a countess disguised as a peasant girl. The count is giving a party as he wants the railway line to go across his lands.
The film is the third in director Castellani's "young love" trilogy (the first two being Sotto il sole di Roma (1948) and È primavera...(1950)). The story concerns the romance between Carmela (Fiore) and Antonio (Musolino). The ardor is one-sided at first, but Carmela is a determined young woman, willing to scale and conquer any obstacle in pursuing her heart's desire. Once he's "hooked," Antonio scurries from job to job to prove his financial viability. Faced with the hostility of their parents, Carmela and Antonio symbolically shed themselves of all responsibilities to others in a climactic act of stark-naked bravado.
Unemployed girl shoplifts in department store. Son of a wealthy family notice the shoplifting but won't turn her in. After awhile they are seen together and press thinks they are engaged.
During a concert tour, famous tenor Riccardo Gatti meets Lixie at an Aida rehearsal and takes her for a ballet dancer. She is in fact trying to get a position for her boyfriend, so she accepts Gatti's date for supper. When she runs away he publishes a newspaper ad offering to give a concert anywhere she chooses if she shows up. She chooses a swimming pool hoping to discourage him, but he accepts.
The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find...
Mad About Opera
The first Polish post-war comedy. Witek and Krysia, a married couple, move to Warsaw and have nowhere to stay. They rent a room in a house with many other lodgers. Witek dreams of their own house and draws a sketch of their future home, marking the place where his wife will sleep with the word "treasure". The other lodgers find the draft and a frantic search for the treasure begins.
The story of Finnish singer Abraham 'Aappo' Ojanperä, who was born in the late 1850s. On his journey from a crier boy from Liminga to an international singing star, Aappo never forgets his first love Katri, who faithfully waits in Liminga for his return.
Musical retelling of the "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves" Arabian Nights tale.
Señor Martinez, a famous theater owner, visits a local café in Mexico because of its reputation for good food and to audition the famous dancer who performs there. Martinez tells the café owner that if the dancer is as good as he has heard, he will offer the dancer a contract to perform in his theater. The café's female singer hears about this and is determined that he won't leave the café without her.
Set in North Karelia, whne Antti Ihalainen's house runs out of matches, he goes to borrow some from a neighbor. On the road, he meets a rich widower, Jussi Vatanen, who asks Ihalai to be his speaker and friend on an engagement trip to the city of Jo. The hosts from Lieper are snorting drunkenly from behind their shoulders.
Strict and always dissatisfied grumbler Mr. Angel gets a voucher for summer recreation. He rejects it at first but he eventually decides to use it and spend 14 days in unionist hut Jezerka together with other merited co-workers.
A few bus-loads of holidaymakers from the agricultural cooperative on a day trip arrive to see the show at the Slavia Circus. But, they have bad luck. It is Monday, the day on which the employees have their extra day off.
Honour and Glory
Shortly after the start of World War II, a ukelele player (George) takes the wrong boat and finds himself in (still uninvaded) Norway. He is mistaken for a fellow British intelligence agent by a woman (Mary), and becomes involved in trying to defeat Nazi agents.