Very well executed

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

When Gloria Swanson sang Love Your Magic Spell Is Everywhere in The Trespasser Hollywood discovered she had a great singing voice. Sad to say though that this film adaption of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein,II's Broadway show Music In The Air was the only film that really exploited her vocal talents.In fact we're lucky that this film was made at all. It was right about now that German subjects became not very popular. Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince had to wait until 1954 for a film version. Among the Jewish moguls in Hollywood, Germany was now symbolized by its Fuehrer and his goosestepping sycophants.Music In The Air is set in Bavaria in the small village of Elmendorf where Al Shean has written a song inspired by a bird call that becomes I've Told Every Little Star. Shean is an old friend of a music publisher in Munich and he and daughter June Lang and her bashful beau Douglass Montgomery head there to see if he can get the song published.Shean and his old friend Reginald Owen get the song inserted in a new operetta. But Lang and Montgomery become pawns in the diva like machinations of John Boles and Gloria Swanson, a talented but always quarreling couple. Lang winds up with the lead in the show, but does she have the right stuff?Music In The Air is one of Jerome Kern's best and most beloved shows which theatrical companies still produce. As is usual the show's score was cut to ribbons. I've Got Every Little Star which is the focal point of the whole show had to stay. But what possessed the folks at Fox to cut The Song Is You from the film? I'm sure lots of people who plunked down their Depression Era nickels to see this film were royally disappointed at not hearing The Song Is You. John Boles was supposed to sing it and I'll bet he was more than disappointed when his number was cut.By the way part of the Jerome Kern legend is that he actually did hear a bird call the way Al Shean does in the film and got the idea for I've Told Every Little Star. Shean is the only member of the Broadway cast to repeat his role for the film.The film version of Music In The Air will I fear be a disappointment to fans of Jerome Kern's music as I am. Nice the film got made at all, but without The Song Is You it is most incomplete.

Pleasant musical comedy from the stage given a big boost by terrific performances by Gloria Swanson and John Boles. They play a bickering couple who get involved with a naive younger couple from an alpine village. And all the bickering revolves around a new operetta and who will play what parts. Familiar plot and OK music. The real attraction is the funny and charming performance by Swanson in the last starring film of her 20-year reign in Hollywood. Like Indiscreet and Tonight or Never, this should have been a hit but Hollywood legend tells us that after The Trespasser, Swanson's next five talkies flopped. Why? Her films were well made and her voice was superb. She had a singing voice reminiscent of Irene Dunne's. Music in the Air was a hit on Broadway, but who knows what was cut for the film version. The stars are joined by a solid supporting cast: Douglass Montgomery (better than usual), June Lang, Al Shean, Jed Prouty, Joseph Cawthorne, Reginald Owen, Marjorie Main, Sara Haden.Swanson and Boles (usually so stiff) have so much fun as they throw themselves into their roles it's hard to resist. The two had starred in the 1927 silent film, The Love of Sunya. Hard to understand today why Swanson's career crashed. She made one other film between this one and her great success in Sunset Boulevard in 1950. This may be the Hollywood debuts for German director Joe May and writer Billy Wilder! So although Music in the Air was a flop in 1934, in 1949 when Wilder was searching for the perfect Norma Desmond, Swanson's name was at the top of the list. Legend has it Mae West was the first choice for the role, but Swanson got and turned in the film performance of the century.

This was an excellent adaptation to film from the stage hit by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. The opening Alpine scene reminds you of a later film, "Sound of Music". A strong screenplay by Howard Young and Billy Wilder that avoided becoming too saccharine.Gloria Swanson was given top billing as a tempestuous German Prima Donna and she did all her own singing which was quite good. She really was a hoot in her role and she really was a natural for comedy. John Boles plays the show's lyric writer and is suave as ever and sung on his own rather well too. Douglas Montgomery is fun to watch. He's a little bit on the goofy side and his songs were dubbed by a James O'Brien. June Lang played the heroine trying to break into show business but fails. Her vocals were dubbed as well by a Betty Hiestand. Ms. Lang showed great effort but like her character she played, doesn't quite cut it. Perhaps she took the same advice and went home. We never heard from her again. Al Shean is also a classic act as the Poppa.

Here we find various famous talents converging at the height of their fame and appeal. Where has this film been all these years? This was a big Depression stage hit for the Master, Jerome Kern, and one of his equally accomplished partners, Oscar Hammerstein II, and transferred to the screen with much of the original delight intact. Definitely a slight tale from a much more innocent era, the story is literally a competition between a team of singing divas each latching onto an attractive, naive, and somewhat star-struck fan visiting from a small Tyrolean mountain village. If it weren't so well done, you might call it all "kitschy," but the result is so sincere that one gets swept up. There are marvelous moments, but surprisingly, not too many involving the famous star, Gloria Swanson, and her handsome sparring partner John Boles. Nothing wrong with their singing, which is, well, glorious! It's the "Diva" act. Although they just skirt going over-the-top on many occasions, there is an overall lack of punch, with too many blasts sailing over their targets. There's a lot of layered shouting, as if everyone were struggling to "work the screwball angle." The best moments are enjoyed during the lush and enchanting music, and in the scenes involving the village, particularly the school-room sequences with teacher and leading bucolic Douglass Montomerey, who turns in the best performance I've seen him give, with not a hint of that namby-pamby, self-pitying, "gloomy Gus" he specialized in. Here he is robust, cheerful, positive, and often found wearing the complete Tyrolean mountain-climbing uniform, which he definitely had the legs to wear. Indeed, he, along with his fellow villagers June Lang and Al Shean, make an energetic, thoroughly entertaining lot, much better at mining the script than their more sophisticated counterparts. The settings are impressive, the period detail attractive, and the costuming, particularly Miss Swanson's wardrobe (although Mr. Boles is decked out to the nines as well), is sensational throughout. Director Joe May pulled off an impressive feat, bringing together unlikely, if somewhat battered giants like Kern, Fox, and Swanson, and making them work so beautifully together. I believe if you enjoy Lubitsch, or European flavor musicals of that era, you'll certainly appreciate this picture.