That Midnight Kiss

1949 "The biggest kiss in movie history!"
6.5| 1h36m| NR| en
Details

Opera singer Prudence Budell, overhears truck driver Johnny Donnetti singing opera, and persuades her opera company to give him a chance in her new opera. They fall in love, but on meeting his colleague Mary while visiting Johnny's work, Prudence becomes convinced Johnny is in love with her.

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Reviews

2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.
Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
writers_reign This came at the tail end of the vogue for musicals combining Classical and Popular - in fact it would mark Jose Iturbi's (who seemed to appear in all of them) last appearance in feature films. Usually - Anchor's Aweigh for example - the emphasis tended to be on popular music with perhaps one or two 'classics' thrown in but here the emphasis is definitely on Classical music with only three examples of the 'popular' song plus half a chorus of It's Three O'Clock In The Morning rendered by J Carroll Naish on the dance floor. This is understandable given that co-star Mario Lanza was making his debut and lacked the clout of Sinatra who was able to load Anchors Aweigh with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn numbers and it is fitting that Iturbi should bow out with such a high percentage of screen time. It's actually a fine cast with support led by Ethel Barrymore who has merely to look regal and toss off dialogue far unworthy of her. Marjorie Reynolds never really broke out on her own but Holiday Inn and this entry look good on her CV. Keenan Wynn and Jules Munshin supply most of the comedy, Thomas Gomez enjoys hamming it up and Arthur Treacher is droll in the background. All in all a pleasant diversion.
marioncap I vote 8 out of 10 just for the amazingly beautiful singing of Mario Lanza. How sad that he never achieved the great opera career his talent deserved! His acting is only passable, but his personal charisma is quite impressive.It drives me crazy that squeaky-voiced sopranina, Kathryn Grayson, who in real life could not even dream of a job as a chorus soprano in an actual functioning opera company, is presented as a plausible leading lady (Lucia di Lammermoor or Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto)! Her voice might be cute in a small room singing folk songs (if you could forgive her hideously spread vowels), but there is no way in Hell that such a tiny sound would ever in a million years carry over an orchestra.(Was there really no soprano with a real voice who could have co-starred with Mario Lanza back in the early 50's? Alas, there probably was, but she probably wasn't a tiny skinny Barbie doll like Kathryn Grayson.)
Avivale A young Mario Lanza. A young Kathryn Grayson. Ethel Barrymore. Keenan Wynn. Jules Munshin hamming it up as only he can.Plotwise, the movie is very thin: Grandmother finances an opera company so her young granddaughter can sing. Except, she doesn't want to sing with the old, fat tenor with the ego-- she wants to sing with the young, gifted truck driver she discovers. Then there's a love triangle, in which of course everything goes wrong because nobody communicates.But the singing is so wonderful, and so are Jose Iturbi's piano skills. We are treated to plenty of both throughout the movie. This film is a gem.
TxMike When "That Midnight Kiss" was filmed, star Kathryn Grayson, a coloratura soprano, was already a veteran with 11 movies on her resume'. Even though they are about the same age, this was Mario Lanza's first featured role, and he performed it well. The musical production numbers are good-looking and great-sounding, with perhaps the two premiere singers of that era, the late 40s.Born Alfredo Cocozza, with an adopted stage name of Mario Lanza, in this movie he plays Johnny Donnetti, an ex-GI born in Philadelphia and with perhaps the greatest tenor voice of all time. It is almost a Mario Lanza biography. In this movie he is "discovered", ends up replacing a temperamental Italian tenor in the operatic production, falls in love with Grayson's character, and the movie ends with their very first kiss.I rated this movie 7 of 10. It is a nice little piece of fluff, nothing new or particularly interesting in the story. Typical MGM fare for that era. But if you love music and great singing, and want a chance to see and hear Mario Lanza, the whole hour and a half is totally enjoyable.