MELODY OF THE HEART (1929) Dita Parlo, Willy Fritsch & Tihamér Lázár | Musical | B&W | Retro Movie

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Melody of the Heart (German: Melodie des Herzens) is a 1929 German musical film directed by Hanns Schwarz and starring Dita Parlo, Willy Fritsch and Gerő Mály.

The film was the first successful sound film produced by the German major studio Universum Film AG (Ufa) and was credited with establishing the popularity of the operetta film. It was shot in Hungary. Initially the film was intended to be silent, but halfway through production its producer Erich Pommer was ordered by his superiors to convert it into a sound film.

Ufa had recently made a deal with the Klangfilm syndicate (consisting of Siemens & Halske, AEG, and Polyphon-Werke AG (who sold Polydor records) to license the Tri-Ergon sound film system, under the name 'Ufa-Klang'. A previous attempt in 1925 by Ufa to use an earlier version of the same system, at the time owned by Klangfilm's former competitor, Tobis, had ended in failure.

The film premiered at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 16 December 1929. It was released in four different languages: German, English, French and Hungarian. Such multiple-language versions, which had been pioneered by British International Pictures, were popular in Europe until dubbing became more widespread.

Synopsis

A young maid from the country looses her job as maid in k.u.k. Budapest, when she stays out too long with her beau, a soldier, who's saving money to buy a horse to open a transport company. After being unemployed for quite a while and her rent is long overdue, the landlady offers her a better job in a nightclub. Meanwhile the soldiers family has decided that her son should marry the daughter of a rich farmer. The soldier finds out about his girl friends profession, and accepts after struggling with himself the match his parents have made. At the day of his engagement his girl friend comes to his hometown with enough money to buy a horse, which leads to a conflict between her, the fiancee, her family, himself and his parents.