Lee Eisenberg Benvenuto Cellini is probably not the most famous figure from Renaissance-era Italy. I had never heard of the man until I saw "The Affairs of Cellini". Nonetheless, the movie makes him look like one fun-loving guy. Assuming that it's accurate, Cellini (played by Fredric March) was someone who just wanted to get romantic...even if it was with a married woman.A lot of the lines come across as comic relief, and there's no shortage of sword-fighting. Just nice, harmless fun for a movie that purports to be historical. I guess that I wouldn't call the movie any sort of masterpiece, but it's still a fun movie. Fay Wray - hot off her role as the love interest of a certain giant ape - looks especially glam in some of those dresses; I suspect that between this movie and her most famous role, she turned a lot of boys into men back in the '30s.Anyway, it's nice, corny fun. Playing the duke is Frank Morgan, a few years before playing a certain man behind the curtain.

David (Handlinghandel) Constance Bennett was born to play a Medici. Her combination of hauteur and ooh-la-la makes this role a perfect fit. Frank Morgan, as her dithering husband, is amusing but less plausible.Fredric March, as the title character, is good. He was always good. Possibly not the heartthrob he needs to be, he is nevertheless both cocky and handsome. Fay Wray is excellent as a commoner whose tastes are too prosaic for the dastardly lover Cellini. She looks beautiful (as does Bennett.) This is certainly atypical Gregory La Cava. It is probably not very accurate historically. But as costume pieces go, it's very compelling. A few years later, another studio made one that is more famous. That was "Marie Antoinette." It was better researched and is still somewhat well known. But it is really dull.The costumes here are gorgeous. Now and then the music is appropriate to the time. A theme that seems distinctly 19th Century Romantic runs through, though.The supporting cast is up to the task. It's hard to imagine what people sitting down in a theater in 1934 made of this. Bennett was still a big star so maybe they were happy to see her. It's an oddity, no doubt about it. But it's very good.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre Benvenuto Cellini was a goldsmith in 16th-century Florence, and apparently he was also something of a hell-raiser and a swordsman (in the sexual sense as well as the literal one). However, it's my understanding that we have only Cellini's own memoirs (never published in his lifetime) as testimony of his sexual prowess. Fortunately, some of his artistic creations have survived, and they leave no doubt as to his skill as an artisan.This movie is based on a play by Edwin Justus Mayer, which also inspired 'The Firebrand of Florence', a musical (with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin) that flopped on Broadway in 1945. I wish I could have seen that musical instead of this movie. What's wrong with it? Well, there's lots of sumptuous Hollywood spectacle on view here, which is part of the problem. This is supposed to be 16th-century Italy, but everything is spotlessly clean and everybody has good teeth. Late in the film, we get a glimpse of brawny Dewey Robinson in a Prince Valiant wig, galumphing about as a poncy steward. I was more impressed by Vince Barnett as Cellini's dogsbody assistant, wearing a wig that conceals Barnett's lug-ears.Some people enjoy Frank Morgan's performance. I don't, largely because he nearly always played a whinnying idiot. Here he's cast as the duke of Florence, who was apparently a whinnying idiot because that's how Morgan plays him. More impressive is Fay Wray, an actress of keen intelligence, who here very convincingly portrays a stupid peasant girl. The jumble of American accents are very annoying in this movie, constantly reminding us that this is 16th-century Florence by way of 20th Century-Fox.Constance Bennett gets top billing, but the real draw here is definitely Fredric March, who plays Cellini in full swashbuckler mode. March's stunt double makes an impressive entrance through the ceiling. The sets and costumes throughout this film are elaborate and impressive, as is the camera work. Still, this is one of those annoying movies in which the hero is the only 'real' man, who invariably comes up trumps in every encounter. I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10. It probably would have been a better movie if the duke had been played by Ralph Morgan, a much better (and more versatile) actor than his brother Frank

Eddie Falco Stumbling across a neat little 80-minute gem like 1934's The Affairs of Cellini is reason enough to lease satellite TV (or a really good cable service, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one). Viewing it almost nearly 70 years after its premiere allows even the neophyte cineaste a neat precis of the progress (or lack of same) that film has made since then, plus primers in ace character acting and deft characterization by the writers.The film centers on 16th-century Florence, a hotbed of wealth and intrigue run by a family you might of heard of (the Medicis), and one of its leading artisans, the goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini (about whom Hector Berlioz wrote an opera and numerous poems and stories have been penned) is sort of a hybrid of Robin Hood and the Scarlet Pimpernel, with a dash of Don Juan thrown in for fun. Played by the very young, unabashedly gorgeous and surprisingly athletic Fredric March (seen many years later in such classics as Inherit the Wind, The Bridges at Toko-Ri and The Best Years of Our Lives), Cellini's a stiffnecked anti-aristocrat that the Duke of Florence (played hilariously by The Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan) and his lethal-seductress wife (Fox's big star of the mid-'30s, Constance Bennett) can't seem to do without, so skilled at goldsmithing and seduction is he.Toss in Fay Wray (the year after making Kong go ape), Fox stalwart Louis Calhern in the Basil Rathbone role and the VERY young Lucille Ball in a supporting role, oodles of classic B&W cinematography, snappy directorial pace (by Fox veteran Gregory La Cava) and quasi-operatic sets and decoration, and you've got the kind of lunchtime matinee that 24-hour classic movie channels like Turner Classic and Fox Movies (where this can be seen at least twice a month) were meant to provide.