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.
An alcoholic woman was charged and tried for murder and a young defense attorney, unaware that she is his mother, takes the assignment to defend her in court.
Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance—and to the beautiful Dorota.
Life in 1847 Paris is as spirited as champagne and as unforgiving as the gray morning after. In gambling dens and lavish soirees, men of means exert their wills and women turned courtesans exult in pleasure.
A kind-hearted young man is thrown out of his corrupt home town of West Rome, Oklahoma. He falls asleep and dreams that he is back in the days of olden Rome, where he gets mixed up with court intrigue and a murder plot against the Emperor.
In 1912, the Titanic embarks on its inevitable collision course with history. In the wake of the over-spending required to build the largest luxury ship in the world, White Star Line executive Sir Bruce Ismay schemes to reverse the direction of his company's plummeting stock value.
When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.
A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society.
A dramatization of the melodramatic story that inspired the popular opera, Pagliacci.German language version of a film simultaneously shot in an Italian version.
Nina Maria Azara is the beautiful and alluring singing spy for Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. Her mission is to seduce French officers, in order for them to reveal Napoleon's intentions toward Spain.
An English peace judge in an Irish district is married to an Irishwoman. She is a caring patriot. He is heavily indebted by a life of luxury, and doesn't shy away from dark deeds to maintain his lifestyle.
Popular movie trailers from 1939
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1939:
Tex arrives on the Parker ranch on Christman eve and is given the job of being Santa Claus. Also dressed as Santa Claus, Blackie robs Parker and kills a man.
In an attempt to drive out settlers of the Los Trancos valley, through which the railroad proposes to run a line, railroad representative Clyde Barton conspires with Dirk to cause a range war between the two largest ranchers, Tom Gray and Harvey Allen.
"Tailspin Tommy" Tompkins and "Skeeter" Milligan are training young U. S. Army fliers for the newly-formed 'Sky Patrol,'a branch of the Army Reserves which operates along the borders and coast-lines, on the lookout for smugglers.
The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
They meet on the plane from Dakar to Casablanca: the well-known American defense lawyer Vandegrift, his daughter Jessie and the arrested Peter Roland, who allegedly kidnapped and murdered the famous film child Binnie Casilla in Stockford in 1928.
When they decide they might as well be penniless husbands and wives as penniless campus sweethearts, three couples at a Midwestern university, against the advice of their friends, get married.
In September 1938, an American diplomat negotiated in London the peace of Munich, rather than rush to Paris where his wife, a famous film actress, is about to fall into the arms of a young first.
Naomi Tazawa (Hiroko Kawasaki), who works at Isetan Department Store, was told by an executive at a film company (Ken Uehara), that he was going to make a film about her.
Comments
Have you watched The Dream of Butterfly yet? What did you think about it?
