SONG OF SCHEHEREZADE

US, 1947, 107 minutes, Colour.
Yvonne de Carlo, Jean- Pierre Aumont, Brian Donlevy, Eve Arden, John Qualen, Richard Lane, Terry Kilburn.
Directed by Walter Reisch.

Song of Scheherezade is a film that is easily ridiculed - and has been. It purports to tell a story about Rimsky-Korsakov?. In 1865 he was a Russian naval cadet and arrived in Morocco. There he met a dancer who inspired him to write some of his greatest music. While the premise may seem satisfactory, the treatment is that of Universal Studios of the '40s. Production was not exactly first-rate or even A-budget. The film relies heavily on artificial sets, some rather garish colour photography. The cast is not outstanding either. Jean-Pierre? Aumont, new in Hollywood, makes an engagingly naive Rimsky-Korsakov?. Yvonne de Carlo, very popular at the time, is the dancing girl. Brian Donlevy enjoys himself as the captain of the ship. There is some exaggerated comedy, rather welcome at times, from Eve Arden.

The film uses many of the conventions of the films about composers - Rimsky-Korsakov? is forever jotting down music, hears melodies and immediately composes some of his own. This happens with the ballet of Scheherezade as well as his Flight of the Bumblebee (which Yvonne de Carlo dances to). The plot is flimsy and done with somewhat tongue-in-cheek. However, it has a certain fascination in itself, this kind of pseudo-reverential Hollywood treatment of a great man. The music is well presented and Universal employed composer Miklos Rosza to arrange it. Rosza composed many of the scores for Alexander Korda's London films and then went to Hollywood and about this time wrote scores for such films as Spellbound. He was later to write epic scores for such films as Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, The King of Kings and was working into the '80s. The film is a curiosity item.