L'elisir d'amore

Die Fledermaus

1946

Theater director Falke, dressed as a bat, ends up in prison after a merry carnival night. Director Frank only releases him after some time. Falke decides to take revenge on his friend Gabriel von Eisenstein, to whom he owes the whole affair. The annual masked ball at Prince Orlofsky's provides the opportunity. Falke stages a game of mistaken identity in which Eisenstein does not recognize his own wife and courts her, while maid Adele appears as the countess. Eisenstein is duped, Falke has taken his revenge.

The Beggar Student

1936

To take a revenge on countess Laura, who slapped him at his proposal, the Governor of the occupied Poland gets her fall in love with a poor student, and exposes him during wedding banquet.

Damals

1943

Vera Meiners' life was sweet but unfortunately for her, it was not to last. Her husband, Jan, left her after she met a former lover in a harmless friendly meeting. Forced to resume her disrupted medical career, she worked in a Swiss clinic but, without the knowledge of the chief surgeon, Vera ordered a risky operation to be performed and was thereafter fired. Penniless, she then works in Spanish nightclubs in order to provide for herself and her child. After many years, she runs into her friend Frank again in one of these nightclubs...

Tosca

1941

Non-musical account of Puccini's opera: Tosca and Cavaradossi are in love, but the tyrant Scarpia desires Tosca and oppresses Cavaradossi who is fighting for freedom.

Der Fuehrer's Face

1943

A marching band of Germans, Italians, and Japanese march through the streets of swastika-motif Nutziland, serenading "Der Fuehrer's Face." Donald Duck, not living in the region by choice, struggles to make do with disgusting Nazi food rations and then with his day of toil at a Nazi artillery factory. After a nervous breakdown, Donald awakens to find that his experience was in fact a nightmare.

Seesterne

1952

Immortal Waltz

1939

Johann Strauss firmly established himself as the leader of a dance orchestra in Vienna in the 1840s. His sons Johann junior and Josef have clearly inherited their father's talent. Nevertheless, father Johann is strictly opposed to both of them training as composers.

Awaara

1951

A petty thief is put on trial for the attempted murder of a lawyer. Through a series of flashbacks, the intertwining lives of the thief, the lawyer, and the thief's defense lawyer are illustrated.

The Young Caruso

1951

This music filled biopic follows the life of the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso from childhood poverty in Naples to the beginning of his rise to fame.

It Started with Eve

1941

A young man asks a hat check girl to pose as his fiancée in order to make his dying father's last moments happy. However, the old man's health takes a turn for the better and now his son doesn't know how to break the news that he's engaged to someone else, especially since his father is so taken with the impostor.

Three Little Pigs

1933

The two pigs building houses of hay and sticks scoff at their brother, building the brick house. But when the wolf comes around and blows their houses down (after trickery like dressing as a foundling sheep fails), they run to their brother's house. And throughout, they sing the classic song, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?".

The Gypsy Baron

1935

Sándor Barinkay joins the gypsies en route to his home village hiding his real identity as an Hungarian nobleman, whose parents were sent to exile. He claims his former properties, now taken by a pig merchant who plays the fool to the villagers' delight. Yet this man has an interesting daughter, and there's also the beautiful gypsy Saffi to consider. And a family hidden treasure to be found.

Träumerei

1944

Mirza Ghalib

1954

A fictionalized account of the life of poet and nobleman Mirza Ghalib during the reign of the last Mughal Emperor, told through the lens of his ill-fated love for a beautiful courtesan he called Chaudhvin.

Casta diva

1935

Martha Eggerth heads the cast of Casta Diva, but the central character is famed Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, here played by American actor Phillips Holmes. Paying but scant attention the facts, the film concentrates on Bellini's colorful love life. Evidently the film went through several rewriting processes, as witness the curious performances of Donald Calthrop and Arthur Margetson, whose characters do complete about-faces halfway through the story. Amidst so many British accents, Martha Eggerth's Polish intonations seem out of place, but she photographs beautifully and sings quite well. Casta Diva was attractively filmed on location in Naples. Not to be confused with the 1954 remake (by Gallone himself) or to the English language version "The Divine Spark" (also directed by Gallone and starred by Eggerth).