Aida (1953)

Overrated and overhyped

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Blistering performances.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I suppose that today this film has relevance because it was an early Sofia Loren film. She was 19 years old when the film was made in 1953.I viewed this film because I wanted to see some of Sofia Loren's early work. I was surprised when she came on camera having had her skin bronzed over in brown makeup to resemble an Ethiopian princess. Surely, today, this would have been viewed as a slur and to be avoided in movie making. It actually became annoying watching Ms. Loren in skin color paint throughout the film.Yes, this film would have been better made if the real opera singers had made this movie. Then, the singing and the actual facial gestures of the real artists would have been apparent. I discount the comments by others about whether the real opera singers are older and heavier in weight.As beautiful as Ms. Loren was at age 19 and still is today, the film would have been better received as though it were being performed on the stage. After all, we don't see beautiful young people on stage with "old opera singers" back stage singing from behind the curtain! Do not discount the success of using heavy-weight opera singers. One only has to refer to the most artistically produced television commercial for the J. G. Wentworth Company with the opera singers on stage singing so professionally the praises of the company's product. This is one of the best and entertaining TV commercials produced to date.The quality of the movie print also makes this production of a somewhat lesser quality. The color ink has faded much and that can not be helped.To improve this film on DVD the production company should add English language subtitles so that we, who do not speak Italian, can know what the lyrics are saying. It would help the story and teach it more than the narrator giving 30 seconds of introduction to the scenes.Watch this film not because of the story of Aida nor the fact that this is an opera. Aside from Ms. Sofia Loren none of her co-actors are known nor remembered by this writer. Instead, watch this movie if you are a fan of Ms. Loren and wish to see her at age 19 -- no matter what the production is.Larry from Illinois

Opera is a different stage art from spoken theatre, let alone theatrical films or television. Opera succeeds on its own terms or it doesn't signify at all. The "problem" with opera is not that opera singers are not as bodacious as film stars; the principal requirement in opera is that the musical drama be conveyed in musical as well as visual terms in a manner all its own, a stage mystery that is easier to experience than to analyse.Non-musicians seldom understand this. They seek to graft on whatever expressive values they trade in within the medium they are familiar with, without understanding why and how opera works on its own, without their alien help.Thus the woman who sings Amneris in the soundtrack of this film, Ebe Stignani (1903-1974) may have been, at 50, wider than she was tall and not Hollywood's idea of an appropriate screen figure, yet she was, even in 1953, an amazing Amneris, successful throughout the world in this, her greatest role, consistently making dramatic contact with her audiences through the musico-dramatic medium of Verdi's music. And she had been doing so since her debut (as Amneris), in 1925.Lois Maxwell, who lip-syncs to Stignani's singing here, simply makes no impact, dramatic, filmic, musical or even sex-appealing. We KNOW that Stignani was a hugely successful Amneris without Maxwell. What does Maxwell add to Signani's Amneris through the medium of this film? Nothing at all.A film that brought us, even at once removed, the greatness of a Stignani or a Renata Tebaldi, might have had some filmic justification. But this film, which adds nothing at all to what the singers had to contribute and rather detracts from it, is of no value.What the film does underline is the limitations, cultural, visual, technological, of a merely mechanical medium. Everything about this film is ludicrously dated, except the singing of the great singers whom it pretended to "improve" all those long years ago.

On paper this looks like a dream of an opera. The voices of Tebaldi and Campora being mimed by Loren and Della Mara on a big screen production, its just got to be sublime, hasn't it? Unfortunately it fails miserably. Loren is simply lost in her role;Tebaldi would have been far better but I suspect she had read the final draft of the screen play, and Della Mara looked more toy-boy than rugged hero. Wait! there is still Verdi's music allied to those wonderful voices,yes they are there if you like your opera in snatches and excerpts, but if not you will quickly lose patience. For example I just happen to believe that one of the most glorious pieces of music is the Nume custode in the first act of Aida. Radames is in the temple and receives the sword and insignia which he dedicates to Ra for the forthcoming battle. The scene is a magnificent Bass-Tenor-Chorus ensemble; opera at its finest. Do not look for it in this film, it is cut, no tenor no chorus just a perfunctory handing over of the sword. Here you are son- Cheers guvnor. No this will not do, it is pretty dire stuff for any poor soul who thinks this might be a half decent stab at bringing opera to the screen

Sophia Loren plays Aida, in one of the worst films of all time. She can't lipsync. In terms of production values, the film is so bad, that at one point, while Loren is mouthing "O Patria Mia," she leans onto what looks to be a stone wall for support, and the canvas set billows and shakes.