6.6 /10 1 Votes
Directed by Lucien Jaquelux Starring Carlos Gardel Country Argentina, Francia Director Lucien Jaquelux | 6.5/10 IMDb Produced by Alfredo Le Pera Running time 25 minutes Initial release 1933 Cast Carlos Gardel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Music by Carlos Gardel Marcel Lattès Music director Carlos Gardel, Marcel Lattès Similar The Lights of Buenos Aires, The Tango on Broadway, Cuesta abajo, Suburban Melody, Tango Bar | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The house is serious is a picaresque musical short film starring the singer of tangos Argentinian Carlos Gardel, directed by the French film director Lucien Jaquelux (who in the credits is simply referred to as Jaquelux), that belongs to the series of French films of Gardel made by the American company Paramount in his studies of Joinville-him-Pont in France. The film is co-starred by Argentinian-Spanish actress Imperio Argentina. The script was written by the Brazilian Alfredo Le Pera. Gardel sings two songs with Le Pera, "Memory malevo" and "Want to me", the latter of which was never recorded on film.
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It premiered on May 19, 1933 in the Cinema Suipacha of Buenos Aires. The originals of the film have been lost and only audio recordings have survived in Vitaphone disks.
Context
In 1931 Carlos Gardel was hired by the American company Paramount to make his first sound motion picture, Lights of Buenos Aires. The film was made in the studios that Paramount had in Joinville-him-Pont, 40 kilometers southwest of the French capital, devoted to produce films for the non American markets. The following year, however, the French Paramount found itself in full crisis, in the context of the world-wide depression and a difficult political climate a few months before Hitler took power in Germany. In spite of this, after the first half of 1932 had gone by without news and Gardel went back to Buenos Aires, the company decided to make new films with the Argentinian singer.
Within this larger project, the feature film Wait for Me was filmed in September 1932. The French director Louis Gasnier was assigned the project, with a script adapted from an American script. The film was scheduled to begin shooting in September 1932 with the title Wait for Me. Immediately after the filming of Wait for Me ended, Paramount summoned the French director Lucien Jaquelux and the consecrated Argentinian-Spanish actress Imperio Argentina to make the short film titled The House is Serious, filmed during the month of October 1932. Once the short film was finished, Paramount filmed Melody of suburb, Gardel's third French feature film.
At the time Brazilian Alfredo Le Pera with the one who Gardel had begun to get along in December of the previous year. Le Pera assumed the functions of screenwriter and songwriter, whose melody composed Gardel.
All the copies of the film have been lost, including the originals that were destroyed in 1940, during the Second World War when the German troops bombed the studies of the Paramount in Joinville. Only its audio has survived, recorded in Vitaphone disks.