British musicals always took a more modest path than the American ones. In "Harmony Heaven", you can see that England in 1930 was far behind in technical proficiency. If you only pay attention to the sound quality, this film will seem quite primitive (e.g. in an early scene, where the theatre director character is clearly too far away from the microphone to be heard properly). However, I felt a sense of excitement seeing such an early musical - a silent film universe breaking into the first gush of full sound. This film, unlike those of the early sound films of the late 20's, was not a half-silent/half-sound film. It was purpose-built for sound. The film has the "look" of late 20's silent film in many ways... yet it has talking and music! Some of the songs in this film are lovely. In particular, the final song ("Harmony Heaven") was in my head for a long time after watching the film. The plot of this film has a kind of sweet, old-fashioned, sentimentality which is appealing in its understated nature. The musical finale is not spectacularly kinetic like a Busby Berkeley number, but is the best they could do at the time and it was a satisfying end. I also enjoyed seeing the sequences of early colour. You might regard this film as a kind of "forgotten first", worth a look if you want to catch a glimpse of how musicals began in British cinema.
