I Dream Too Much (1935) User Reviews (10)

Pons' high notes

[billellis · 6/10 · 22 April 2006]

Because of Lily Pons' high soprano, this film was rudely nicknamed "I Scream Too Much." Actually, Pons had a lovely light voice with a girlish sound; her singing didn't sound like screaming. In spite of my love of serious music, I have to laugh at the nickname.

Henry Fonda and Lily Pons? OK. Today, combining a young male romantic lead with an opera singer seems strange. In the mid 20th Century, classical music wasn't viewed suspiciously by most people, as it is now. No rock, rap, or hip hop yet (now THAT's what I call screaming).

I hope this film will become available on DVD or tape - it's been years since I've seen it.

Lightweight musical designed to showcase opera star Lily Pons

[AlsExGal · 5/10 · 8 March 2021]

Struggling American composer Johnny Street (Henry Fonda) is in France where he stumbles across a naive, sheltered young woman, Annette Monard (Pons). After a drunken night out, they wake up married, and decide to give it a go. Johnny is stunned to discover that Annette is a gifted operatic singer, in training since childhood, and after impresario Paul Darcy (Osgood Perkins) hears her, she becomes a leading star of the European musical stage, much to the annoyance of Johnny, who can't sell a song much less his opera. Also featuring Eric Blore (with a performing seal), Lucille Ball, Lucien Littlefield, Mischa Auer, Paul Porcasi, Gino Corrado, Billy Gilbert, Ferdinand Gottschalk, and Scotty Beckett.

Pons, a gifted singer, has trouble with her dialogue and her thick French accent makes understanding her a bit difficult at times. She seems like she's enjoying herself, but at age 37 at the time of filming she seems a bit old for her role. The romance is lacking in chemistry, and the comedy is weak, especially considering the talents of Blore and Ball. That leaves the songs: there's some classical-style opera, some operetta bits, and some pop tunes, but none made any impression. The "show-stopper" musical number at the end, featuring a fashion show, and one of the silliest choreographed group dance bits I've ever seen, brings some unintentional entertainment. This movie managed to nab an Oscar nomination, for Best Sound Recording.

Lily Pons hits some nice high notes...that's about it...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 14 February 2007]

The very concept of HENRY FONDA (the "aw shucks" guy from the sticks) as the husband of an opera singer (LILY PONS) is a weak idea that must have posed quite a problem for the scriptwriters. You have to wonder how audiences accepted this idea way back then because Fonda's youthful image was strictly the unsophisticated farm boy type.

But that's not the only improbable thing about I DREAM TOO MUCH. The slight story is silly (as most musicals of the '30s were), and enjoyment of the film will depend entirely on whether or not you like to hear Miss Pons give out with her flute-like operatic voice on several well chosen arias. She certainly had an amazing vocal range and her rendition of "The Bell Song" from L'Akme is a highlight of this otherwise rather ordinary film.

ERIC BLORE is there for a few standard comic routines and you can even catch a glimpse of LUCILLE BALL as a tourist in one of her early roles at RKO. But there's nothing much one can say about the film itself except that it gave audiences a chance to hear why Pons was such a favorite at the Met for a period amounting to something like thirty years. Otherwise, it's strictly routine stuff as romantic comedy, coming to life only when Pons sings.

Another opera singer tries it out in the movies....

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 20 May 2017]

Back in the 1930s, studios loved trying out opera stars in movies. Opera stars Lawrence Tibbett made several films (including one with Laurel & Hardy), Grace Moore just a few more and Lily Pons made four appearances in films. The only really successful movie star/opera singers were Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy...but there is a reason. They were primarily actors and then singers....whereas Tibbett, Moore and Pons were first and foremost singers. Nowadays, you look at many of these opera star features and you wonder....how could audiences of the day enjoy these pictures? After all, the average person was NOT an opera fan...and, in hindsight, they really didn't as Moore's nine films was the most that these three opera stars made.

Annette is a sheltered girl and has seen nothing of the world. So, one night she sneaks out of her house and encounters a stranger in a cute meet up. Johnny (Henry Fonda) is a bohemian who has bounced about Europe and has no intentions of settling down...yet the morning after they meet he awakens to find they are married. He has no idea that his wife is a world class singer and he think his key to success is his musical compositions. Eventually, his ego is bruised as he sees his wife being showered with praise and his compositions aren't attracting any attention at all.

I am no opera expert. However, Pons' very high pitched singing and speaking voice were NOT easy on the ears...and might explain her very short film career. She tries very hard...but I honestly cannot recall a woman speaking THIS high pitched in a movie and it was a bit painful. Overall, an odd curio but not much more. Fans of Henry Fonda will probably enjoy him but the film isn't particularly good...like most of the opera films.

Lily Serenades Her Jockey

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 13 May 2009]

The Mid Thirties was a great time for opera when after Grace Moore had scored so well in One Night Of Love all the studios immediately rushed out to sign their own sopranos. MGM already had Jeanette MacDonald, but Columbia had Moore, Paramount signed Gladys Swarthout and RKO signed Lily Pons for this film, I Dream Too Much.

In between all the high Cs that Pons hit, I Dream Too Much is the story of a boy and girl for whom success does not come at the same time. Lily Pons while trying to escape her strict music teacher for a night of fun and frolic, lands on Henry Fonda as she's climbing out her window. Wouldn't you know it Fonda turns out to be a budding composer and after a night on the town, they wind up married.

But while she gains acclaim for her singing, Fonda just can't get any notice for his music. The same plot was used in the MGM Jeanette MacDonald-Lew Ayres film Broadway Serenade so if you've seen that you know how this one goes. That one however was more dramatic and this was played more for comedy.

What I Dream Too Much does have going for it are four Jerome Kern- Dorothy Fields songs to go with the operatic arias that Ms. Pons does. The best known of these is The Jockey On The Carousel which Lily sings while on a carousel to little Scotty Beckett.

Fonda in a comic role has little to do, but display a kind of oafish charm. The film is clearly a vehicle for Lily Pons and he knows it.

As for the film, it still retains a lot of charm. I wish opera and operetta were still done on the big screen, but that day as come and gone. And we sure don't have composers like Jerome Kern writing for the screen either.

I dream of equality for women - apparently I Dream Too Much.

[crispy_comments · 4/10 · 2 November 2006]

Oh goody - Yet another movie wherein the husband feels threatened by his wife's talent, and can't deal with the blow to his ego when her career is more successful and she makes more money than he does. I really don't enjoy these kinds of stories. Inevitably the wife gives up her career to have babies and support her hubby's dreams.

What I don't understand is, why can't Fonda and Pons' characters work TOGETHER and live as equals, each contributing to their income? After all, their skills complement each other, he being a composer, and she a singer. But no, after helping to make his show a hit, the little woman must retire and sing nothing but lullabies for their kids. Guess his fragile little ego can't stand to share the spotlight. Sigh.

If you can stand the sexism, this film has some pleasant songs and fairly humorous moments - Fonda's drunk scenes, for instance. And I just love the part where he regrets marrying Pons the morning after, tells her that she's too skinny and he'll probably beat her, but relents when he discovers what a good cook she is. Haw! Now *that's* comedy! Um, yeah. There's just no escaping the sexism, is there?

There's really not much to recommend about this film except the always amusing Eric Blore, delightful in his too-few scenes. He talks to a seal, he talks about a seal, he refuses to serve drinks as a waiter - it's all good. Lily Pons isn't the best actress - very limited range of facial expressions. But her vocal range was anything but limited ...apparently she could reach high *F*. Yowza. Coincidentally, that's just about the grade I'd give this movie. Nah, I'd give it a high C.

For opera lovers

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 26 August 2008]

"I Dream Too Much," nicknamed "I Scream Too Much," is a 1935 film starring opera singer Lily Pons and Henry Fonda, who at this point in his life resembled Jane Fonda in a man's haircut. He was really at the height of his most adorable-ness. Fonda plays a composer named Johnny Street who marries a young woman, Annette, only to discover that she has an operatic voice. In attempting to push his opera, she sings some of it for the head of the opera company in Paris. He makes her a huge star and Johnny is stuck on the sidelines. When he finds out that she is paying for a production of his opera, he leaves her.

This is a slight story no doubt prompted by the success of Jeanette MacDonald and Grace Moore that relies on the voice and personality of Lily Pons and the cuteness of Fonda. Eric Blore plays a neighbor who has a trained seal; he's there for comic relief, and he was always funny.

Pons was a huge opera star who actually sang for the last time in 1972, when she was 74 years of age! She was tiny at a time when opera stars ran very big, she was very glamorous, and her timing was impeccable - she arrived in America during the Depression and saved the Metropolitan Opera from bankruptcy. Her signature aria was the Bell Song from Lakme, an opera done infrequently today if at all. In it, she wore a bare midriff costume and showed off her F above high C and her coloratura technique. She was an ideal Rosina, Gilda, Lucia, Linda di Chamonix, etc. Women singers in those days were trained a little differently than they are today, with back placement of the high notes. Pons' middle voice and extension above high C were lovely, but the notes from F to high C had a shrillness to them, at least in recording. Her speaking voice records shrilly as well.

This is actually a sweet film that the actors make enjoyable. I could have done without the long, dragging number at the end, but it's a chance to see one of opera's legends and a very young Fonda.

i dream too much

[mossgrymk · 4/10 · 27 October 2021]

Who's worse, Cyd Charisse when she's not dancing or Lily Pons when she's not singing? (And no, Doris Day, who could actually be a good actress on far spaced occasions, is not even in the running). It's a close call but my money's on Pons with that insufferable, nails on a French menu chalkboard Pepita Le Peu accent and simpering smile. Fonda really paid his acting dues having to team with this babe and that stupid seal, huh?

Light and fluffy, like a cloud, and that's nothing but visible air.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 7 August 2017]

This is the type of film that might have appealed to audiences in 1935, but today, you have to watch almost in secret because it could drive your neighbors to call the police on you for Lily Pon's voice disturbing the peace. It's loud and shrill, certainly like no voice you'd hear on what remains of the radio. She's a runaway Parisian girl who meets American songwriter Henry Fonda, wakes up married to him and accidentally becomes a successful opera star (with a score that Fonda wrote but didn't get credit for) while he stews over masculine pride. Fonda, in his first year in films, shows a potential for comedic timing, and Pons is humorous in small doses. That voice, though, might get dogs yowling because that voice doesn't exist anymore outside indoor opera companies, particularly European ones.

One song, about a jockey on a carousel, expresses my sentiment about classic style music mixed with popular music; it doesn't always work. Pons starts singing the song to a fidgety kid who is whaling yet immediately stops and looks up at her with a Cheshire cat grin as she starts her own yowling. Pretty soon, everybody in this busy Paris district is joining in, some for individual choruses, and I cringed, both in annoyance and amusement. When she tries to sing a bluesy number in a cafe, it's totally out of place. Voices like hers are not made for musical comedy, and even in the choral numbers, it's far more high brow than operetta. The finale includes a fashion show that is camp now, even if female audiences went gaga over it in 1935. Today, it's a visual delight for drag queens who couldn't find what they were looking for in the color fashion show in "The Women".

Eric Blore and his barking seal, Duchess, get a few laughs, but a scene revealing that Duchess has "passed on" dampens the light atmosphere. Lucille Ball, unrecognizable pretty much as a platinum line, gets prominent billing in the credits (probably a re-release after she was leading lady in B films), but really has only one line. I keep forgetting about her and Fonda in this, reunited 7 years later for "The Big Street" and 33 years later in "Yours, Mine and Ours". Pons tried to break into Jeanette MacDonald and Grace Moore territory in film, but only made a small handful before returning to live performance. As for Fonda, it would take a little time, but a few years down the road, he was the one writing his own ticket. This film has him way up, sadly, in the rear mezzanine.

Lily Pons' singing makes this movie

[runtexas · 9/10 · 11 October 2021]

I found this movie on TCM. Lily Pons' singing is awesome, it makes the movie. I was born too late to hear her sing in person, but thanks to movies like this I can hear her.