Most of the 14 previous reviewers of this movie were evidently very devoted Lanza fans. Several said it is his best movie - far from it - and most heap lavish praise on it. It's not a bad movie, certainly, but it doesn't deserve all the 8s, 9s, and even 10s they showered on it.
First, it's worth remembering the context of this film. With the success of tv in the early 1950s and its affordability for more and more Americans, Hollywood was left scrambling for ways to draw viewers to movie theaters and away from Milton Berle et al on the small b&w tube. So, they focused on what tv could not then offer: sex (or at least the suggestion of sex: all those Doris Day double entendre movies); color; and wide vistas. (There were no multiplexes. Movie theaters had ONE screen, and it was a lot bigger than those small tv tubes, or many of the movie theater screens you find in multiplexes today.) Hollywood produced endless travelogues in Technicolor and Cinemascope with a plot in front of them. The most famous was Around the World in 80 Days, but there were lots of others. Many of Hollywood's major movies from the 1950s were set in Europe: Gigi, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, An American in Paris, Love in the Afternoon, etc.
For the First Time, in its own way, was one of them. We go from one colorful European locale to the next, always with colorful outdoor shots to set the scene. Lots of local color in places Americans could not yet afford to travel to (Capri). I suspect the Capri wedding scenes must have looked pretty out of date to the residents of Capri even in 1959. There's a lot of cultural stereotyping here. But to Americans who still knew Europe only from the movies - and the stories of all those returned GIs - this would have been yet another installment in what tv could not provide them that they wanted to see.
Lanza is not at his best here. Not because he's somewhat overweight. That bothered Hollywood studio heads years ago. Louis B. Mayer evidently got Judy Garland hooked on drugs in an effort to keep her weight down. Harry Cohn kept after Grace Moore to keep her weight down at Columbia. And so forth. Times have changed, though. While women still get tortured about their weight, Hollywood has finally come to realized that even heavier men can be seen as sexy by the public (James Gandolfini). And while Lanza is certainly stout here, he's an appealing stout who still makes a very convincing romantic lead. If Hollywood - and 1950s movie audiences - could accept much older men with young women (Cary Grant, Humphry Bogart, and Gary Cooper with a decades-younger Audrey Hepburn, for example), we shouldn't have any problems accepting a heavier Lanza with the svelte female lead.
The problem with Lanza for me in this movie is in the operatic scenes, especially the long Otello death scene. His singing is ok, though not at the level of, say, Mario del Monaco. But his "acting," if you can call it that, makes no sense whatsoever. He obviously knew what he was singing; his Italian diction was great. But what he does makes no sense.
Which gets me to another problem here: the way the opera scenes, especially the two longest, the Otello and the Aida, are inserted with no explanation whatsoever. There's no effort at all to integrate these scenes into the movie for the benefit of non-opera fans, who would have constituted the majority of the audience. There is no explanation of what is going on. Those scenes must have looked pretty foolish to them. I imagine that in 1959 even most non-opera goers knew what was going on in "Vesti la giubba", which Lanza does a fine job with, until the last phrase. But something should have been done to integrate the other scenes, to prepare the audiences for them.
And then, why do the male trio from Cosí when Costa is in Salzburg? Mozart has lots of good tenor parts in his operas, with arias that Lanza could have shown in.
The pop songs are forgettable. "Come prima" did nothing for me. Ditto for the German drinking song. (How did the female lead, who was deaf just a day or so before, learn the tune and the words so fast?) "Pineapple picker", clearly designed to give Lanza a chance to compete with Elvis Presley, could have been a lot of fun, but it isn't developed into anything. The Schubert Ave Maria could have been deeply moving, with the outside background chorus like the Miserere in Trovatore, but that isn't developed either.
As for the rest of the movie: there are holes in the plot, and things happen very fast at times. Zsa Zsa Gabor's surprise appearances make less and less sense as the movie goes on. (She does look beautiful, though. A shame she couldn't have been given at least one song.)
In short, I found myself looking to see how much time was left over and over. There just wasn't enough here to hold me.
First, it's worth remembering the context of this film. With the success of tv in the early 1950s and its affordability for more and more Americans, Hollywood was left scrambling for ways to draw viewers to movie theaters and away from Milton Berle et al on the small b&w tube. So, they focused on what tv could not then offer: sex (or at least the suggestion of sex: all those Doris Day double entendre movies); color; and wide vistas. (There were no multiplexes. Movie theaters had ONE screen, and it was a lot bigger than those small tv tubes, or many of the movie theater screens you find in multiplexes today.) Hollywood produced endless travelogues in Technicolor and Cinemascope with a plot in front of them. The most famous was Around the World in 80 Days, but there were lots of others. Many of Hollywood's major movies from the 1950s were set in Europe: Gigi, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, An American in Paris, Love in the Afternoon, etc.
For the First Time, in its own way, was one of them. We go from one colorful European locale to the next, always with colorful outdoor shots to set the scene. Lots of local color in places Americans could not yet afford to travel to (Capri). I suspect the Capri wedding scenes must have looked pretty out of date to the residents of Capri even in 1959. There's a lot of cultural stereotyping here. But to Americans who still knew Europe only from the movies - and the stories of all those returned GIs - this would have been yet another installment in what tv could not provide them that they wanted to see.
Lanza is not at his best here. Not because he's somewhat overweight. That bothered Hollywood studio heads years ago. Louis B. Mayer evidently got Judy Garland hooked on drugs in an effort to keep her weight down. Harry Cohn kept after Grace Moore to keep her weight down at Columbia. And so forth. Times have changed, though. While women still get tortured about their weight, Hollywood has finally come to realized that even heavier men can be seen as sexy by the public (James Gandolfini). And while Lanza is certainly stout here, he's an appealing stout who still makes a very convincing romantic lead. If Hollywood - and 1950s movie audiences - could accept much older men with young women (Cary Grant, Humphry Bogart, and Gary Cooper with a decades-younger Audrey Hepburn, for example), we shouldn't have any problems accepting a heavier Lanza with the svelte female lead.
The problem with Lanza for me in this movie is in the operatic scenes, especially the long Otello death scene. His singing is ok, though not at the level of, say, Mario del Monaco. But his "acting," if you can call it that, makes no sense whatsoever. He obviously knew what he was singing; his Italian diction was great. But what he does makes no sense.
Which gets me to another problem here: the way the opera scenes, especially the two longest, the Otello and the Aida, are inserted with no explanation whatsoever. There's no effort at all to integrate these scenes into the movie for the benefit of non-opera fans, who would have constituted the majority of the audience. There is no explanation of what is going on. Those scenes must have looked pretty foolish to them. I imagine that in 1959 even most non-opera goers knew what was going on in "Vesti la giubba", which Lanza does a fine job with, until the last phrase. But something should have been done to integrate the other scenes, to prepare the audiences for them.
And then, why do the male trio from Cosí when Costa is in Salzburg? Mozart has lots of good tenor parts in his operas, with arias that Lanza could have shown in.
The pop songs are forgettable. "Come prima" did nothing for me. Ditto for the German drinking song. (How did the female lead, who was deaf just a day or so before, learn the tune and the words so fast?) "Pineapple picker", clearly designed to give Lanza a chance to compete with Elvis Presley, could have been a lot of fun, but it isn't developed into anything. The Schubert Ave Maria could have been deeply moving, with the outside background chorus like the Miserere in Trovatore, but that isn't developed either.
As for the rest of the movie: there are holes in the plot, and things happen very fast at times. Zsa Zsa Gabor's surprise appearances make less and less sense as the movie goes on. (She does look beautiful, though. A shame she couldn't have been given at least one song.)
In short, I found myself looking to see how much time was left over and over. There just wasn't enough here to hold me.