You won't be disappointed!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is sheer delight-nothing new in the story line, but such music and such directorial pacing, plus exuberant and lovely performances from MacDonald and Novarro with able support from Butterworth and Morgan. This is a brisk film- adapting Kern and Harbach's operetta/musical comedy pastiche from 1931 (355 performances on Broadway, just under a year, despite the MGM posters' boasts that it played two years on Broadway).Songs are rarely production numbers, they start, they are expanded, they are re-prised, much like what Hammerstein wanted musical theater to be {Kern had created SHOW BOAT with Hammerstein four years earlier and perhaps caught the bug].Both MacDonald and Novarro are wonderful, romantic and with great chemistry. Charles Butterworth is wonderful as always in support, as is Frank Morgan.This was the fifth and final film of Vivienne Segal, Broadway star of Rodgers and Hart's A CONNECTICUT YANKEE and PAL JOEY. She made 5 full length films, four of them in full two- strip Technicolor - two are lost, one survives in black and white only. She has here two sequences as an established star - one 3.5 minutes and one 3 minutes. It's her farewell to film, but she exits beautifully and wisely. The numbers: Impressions In A Harlem Flat (piano); She Didn't Say Yes; A New Love Is Old; The Night Was Made For Love; I Watched The Love Parade; The Breeze Kissed Your Hair; One Moment Alone; Try To Forget.The hits were of course the standards: She Didn't Say Yes and The Night Was Made For Love.There is a three strip Technicolor finale that lasts four minutes.Most enjoyable and an absolute delight!

Silent screen star Ramon Novarro teams up with Jeanette MacDonald in "The Cat and the Fiddle," a 1934 musical film. The film also stars Jean Hersholt, Frank Morgan, and Vivienne Segal.The story concerns two songwriters, one from a classical background, Victor Florescu (Novarro, and one assumes from that last name, he's from Roumania), and Shirley Sheridan (MacDonald) a young woman from a popular songwriting background who meet. He falls madly in love with her, even turning down a major opportunity with an impresario (Morgan) who turns out to be more interested in Jeanette as a girlfriend.Eventually Victor wins over Shirley, and the two move in together. Now, I thought the code came in earlier than this, but it appears I'm wrong. I was very surprised when later in the movie, she suggests that they get married because I thought they already were.Her song becomes a huge hit. Eventually he succumbs to the impresario's pressure to get him out of the picture by breaking up with Shirley. He is convinced that he is holding her back. Victor then gets a big opportunity when a star (Segal) agrees to appear in his operetta. When he refuses to be seduced by her, her husband gives her a choice, the operetta or him, Mr. Money Bags, and she leaves with her husband. Now he's stuck, and he owes money to boot.This film ran something like one hour and thirty minutes and seemed longer than Battleship Potemkin. This mainly had to do with the casting of Navarro who could just about carry a tune, and when he did, his voice had a tremelo faster than a butterfly's wings.Jeanette MacDonald, of course, is luminous - beautiful, charming, and in great voice. Navarro did just not have what it took to be her leading man. As stiff as Nelson Eddy was, there was something about the two of them together that had real chemistry. No such thing here.This is a movie, as someone said here, for Jeanette MacDonald fans only. She's always worth watching, and someone here also mentioned seeing her do King & I. I'm envious.

Notable for three things - the MGM debut of the lovely Jeanette MacDonald; the musical ability of Ramon Novarro, at this time on his way out of films as his star began to wane; and the Technicolour finale.'The Cat and the Fiddle' comes to the screen from the Broadway operetta, retaining most of the already-dated songs, and a plot designed to make the most of familiar character actors of the time (Charles Butterworth, Joseph Cawthorn, Jean Hersholt).It is definitely minor league stuff when you consider the musical legacy of the MGM studios, but definitely worth watching. The leads are good together and in excellent voice, and the film is funny, sparkling, and very much of its time.

Witty film is powered along by the energy of Ramon Novarro. His exceptional work in this film reveals his enormous talent for comedy and drama. The scene where he pretends not to love Jeanette, so she will leave him for her career, is superbly under-stated and very moving.Jeanette's not bad either but a bit too florid. Great supporting cast, especially an hilarious Charles Butterworth, and excellent direction make this a film not to miss. I hated most of the music though - hideous operetta.And don't turn the colour down - the last scene bursts into rather lurid technicolour.