A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I was feeling unwell and wanted to lay down and watch a movie to take my mind off it. I was searching on Netflix on the Instant Play and did 1930s romantic comedies. I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw "Evergreen" offered as one of them. I had been searching for the movie since the 1970s, the last time I saw it on PBS in the Los Angeles area. It disappeared about the same time as a Barbra Streisand movie, a remake of "A Star is Born" came out, with the theme song "Evergreen". I can't be certain but it seems to be more than a coincidence.It was even better than I remembered. Sometimes it's a bad idea to watch a movie you hadn't seen since you were a child or a teen since it often disappoints. "Evergreen" didn't do that. :) Jessie Matthews is absolutely charming and Sonny Hale is less annoying than I remembered him being. I enjoyed the 1890s-early 1900s music during the first segment (I like that kind of music). The song "When You've Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart" written in 1934 but supposed to be from ca. 1904 didn't jar or sound like it didn't belong to the earlier era, but also wasn't made to sound stereotypically "Gay (or Naughty) Nineties". The music in this picture hit all the right notes (pun intended).A bit of trivia--"Tinkle, Tinkle, Tinkle", a song from this movie, was used as the closing music in Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 "39 Steps" when Hannay and Pamela are backstage at the London Palladium and had uncovered the spy ring and their secret-- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026029/trivia The video and audio are both very good, not in the least muddy or dark.It's a very well written story. Just when it looks to slow down it picks right back up. Very funny, sweet, and just plain fun. The nostalgic moment when Harriet Green, Jr, is in the court room to prove her innocence of defrauding the public is a highlight of the picture. She is harmonizing with her mother's recording of "When You've Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart" and it really does bring a lump to the throat. They made and used a cylinder recording and didn't artificially amplify it (other than to be able to hear it). It sounds just like real cylinder recordings do.

Most of the reviews on this page seem to be coming from experienced viewers of the period with much broader knowledge of 30s musicals than I have. My viewing experience of the 30s doesn't extend out much past Errol Flynn, and while his swashbuckling style bears a vague resemblance to more recent times, I can assuredly say that this movie is of a completely different style to anything else I've ever seen. I suspect that modern audiences will have trouble appreciating the songs and dance routines, as the world has moved on several times over since then and these days expects something quite different for it's entertainment. I would like to think however, that any person born of a more recent generation (I'm 37 at the time of writing) viewing a movie from this period would have respect for the historical importance of such an opportunity. At the very least it is a glimpse at our world dating back 75 years, and very recently restored and transferred to DVD by Network media (25 May 2009). So what is my interest in this particular film? Quite simply; Jessie Matthews. I regard her as the most beautiful and charming woman I have ever seen on screen, and that is taking into account all modern day actresses. She is a complete natural with comedy, and despite a large portion of Evergreen's 90 minutes being devoted to singing and dancing, Jessie's comedic ability still gets a chance to shine through. Furthermore, while I find it difficult to appreciate the musical side of the production, I can safely say that there is never a moment when Jessie does not look perfectly suited to the task of both singer and dancer. I found the plot to be a little silly but still entertaining, and in fact the 90 minutes run time felt more like 60 by the time the film had come to an end. I would dearly love to see all of Jessie's films released on DVD, and can only hope that the company decides to do so, and I also hope that there is a large audience out there that can still appreciate a glimpse of a different world.

This film appeared more frequently on Channel 13 in the late 1980s than it does today. I'm glad it has been transferred to DVD, and I hope to find it one day.The film was based on a musical comedy of the same name that was composed by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart but produced in London. It starred the rising musical comedy star of the 1930s and early 1940s Jessie Matthews. Married to Sonny Hale (who appears in the film as her producer) the story was about how Matthews takes part in a mild swindle. She is the granddaughter of a turn-of-the-century stage star, a beauty of that day, and Matthews pretends she is the same woman who has retained her youthful looks (but has grayish hair) due to a "fountain of youth" concoction. Hence the title, EVERGREEN. The show had many R.& H. tunes in it, but the best one was "Dancing on the Ceiling" which is still a standard.In the movie, Jessie Matthews only pretends to be her mother, but the story is relatively the same. The complications involve her increasing romance with her publicist, her having to keep up the fiction of her reawakening an older romance with the aristocrat who romanced her mother, and her having to handle the blackmail of her actual father. It does eventually work out, even for the blackmailer (Hartley Powers).Given the relative poverty in budgets of British musicals as opposed to Americans ones, this film is on par with the best American musicals of the period. As for Matthews, she went on to other musical film triumphs, including "FIRST A MAN", a musical about a woman, pretending to be a female impersonator. It was based on a German film, and both were the basis for the Julie Andrews - Robert Preston - James Garner triumph VICTOR/VICTORIA.

Evergreen is an old evergreen favourite of mine, now 70 years young and rising. Jessie Matthews sparkles but as usual Sonnie Hale tinkles.It's got a typically bizarre 30's British film plot, but it's handled in a defter way than was usual to help suspend your disbelief for the required 90 minutes. Illegitimate 20 yo daughter of deceased famous Music Hall singer comes from obscurity to impersonate her and gains fame as a result, the decent looking chap she's falling for (and vv) finds himself having to impersonate her non-existent son while her real father comes out of the woodwork after 20 years and starts to blackmail them. And for thousands of pounds a time in todays money - nice man!Of course this is all merely filler for the Rodgers & Hart songs, none greater than Dancing On The Ceiling, a sublime and surreal 4 minutes than grows more beautiful every time I see it. Jessie never used her beautiful cut glass voice to better effect. She was supposed to be a great dancer but I've not seen any evidence of it yet in her films, but this is probably as close as she ever will come to impressing me in that department. I'm always mindful of Dirk Bogarde's personal assessment of her dancing talents in the BBC documentary about her that he narrated in the early '90's that she was better than Ginger Rogers, and that she was a success in the US because of this. Again, Rogers had her own style - maybe Jessie was better in a chorus line; to me she danced like an ostrich on an escalator, her flying feet competition only to Charlotte Greenwood or Jackie Chan. Having said that, I could watch her films until the cows came home, they're all pleasant with good music, good dancing and good stories - sometimes!Watch this and marvel - that anyone as vital as she could die in obscurity in a nursing home and be buried unmarked in an obscure cemetery.