An offbeat melodrama liberally laced with music, the locally produced "Rigoletto" is an oddly affecting Depression-era fairy tale that mixes and matches elements from "Beauty and the Beast" and "Phantom of the Opera."
The semi-ensemble story line focuses primarily on a young girl living in a poverty-stricken rural town called Castle Gate. She has some undeveloped vocal talent but each year loses the local singing contest to the same snooty rich girl. Naturally, her friends and family are rooting her on, but she's too nice to be vengeful.
Meanwhile, a number of local mortgage loans are being called in, resulting in poor families being displaced from their homes. And since a mysterious, wealthy stranger has moved into the long-empty mansion just outside of town, he is the prime suspect.
The story really gets going when young Bonnie (newcomer Ivey Lloyd) goes to work as a housekeeper in the mansion. At first she is forbidden to enter the room where "the master" works, but she eventually meets the brooding, angry, long-haired Ribaldi (Joseph Paur, a veteran of the Los Angeles Civic Opera), whose face is scarred on one side and who walks with a limp. (All he's missing is that stylish "Phantom" half-mask.)
After a time, Ribaldi is revealed to be a brilliant but emotionally unstable voice teacher. Only warily does he begin a semi-paternal relationship with the fatherless girl. And, not unpredictably, that relationship culminates in his teaching Bonnie how to sing like an angel, just in time for a big-city competition (where the snooty rich girl is also a contestant).
Lloyd and Paur are quite good in their roles - and both have excellent singing voices. Their scenes together give the film some genuinely fiery drama, and their renditions of the original songs - by Michael McLean, Kurt Bestor, Sam Cardon and Chase Thomas - are most enjoyable.
The many supporting characters are a mixed bag, however, with performances that range from witty to amateurish. The best of these is a loud-mouth local farmer, played with a goofy sense of humor by Frank Gerrish. The worst is the clumsy butler Hans, a hammy performance by John Huntington, played with a bit too much abandon - and an awful German accent.
Writer-director Leo Paur (older brother of Joseph) is better at pulling us into the period setting and delineating characters than he is with the sometimes hokey dialogue and stodgy pacing.
But the result is an earnest, surprisingly engaging film, and it does get a tremendous boost from those terrific songs and T.C. Christensen's knockout cinematography.