January

City of Song, renamed Farewell to Love for America, was a co-production trilingual from Associated Sound Film Industries, made at Wembley and in parts in Naples. The German original, Die Singende Stadt, premiered in Vienna in October 1930, with Brigitte Helm playing opposite the singing star of the moment, Jan Kiepura. The original intention was that the British version would be in colour. City of Song only narrowly escaped being classed as foreign. It was obvious that whatever else British film-makers did when abroad, making a foreign country look attractive to foreigners was not one of them. Many of the films made in this early period were homeless, crossing the seas to be remade in different languages. The tedious and surely unsatisfactory business of having to re-shoot in different languages, with changed personnel, did little to spur creative thought.

Casts turning up for that day’s City of Song schedule were mixing with a smorgasbord of nationalities. The director, Carmine Gallone, was Italian, the producer Arnold Pressburger Austrian, and the production supervisor Bernard Vorhaus American; the screenwriters were Hungarian Hans Székely and British Miles Malleson, who for good measure wrote a role for himself as a stage doorman. The original cinematographer was the Hungarian Arpad Viragh, who contracted typhoid during the shooting and died on location in Capri; he was succeeded by the German Curt Courant. The film editor Lars Moen was of Danish-American descent.

Based on a storyline by C. H. Dand, the plot is an early example of the theatrically themed formula that, with various alterations and variations, threaded through many British (and American) musical films of the decade. Visiting Naples, wealthy, sophisticated Claire Winter (Betty Stockfeld) is attracted to the Neopolitan singer Giovanni Cavallone (Jan Kiepura), as much by his looks as his voice. She returns with him to London and a high-society milieu. Cavallone turns his back on her and the chance of success as a performer in England, returning to the arms of his childhood sweetheart Carmela. Their reunion is a little dampened by his donning of a beret.