I had/have the vague gut feeling that this might be another nonsensical recent change in the imdb listings, and to make sure I just looked up the two older 30s lists to find out in which decade it was placed here formerly. And the result was: it isn't in either the 2004 or the 2006 list!
Something must have gone wrong then, or was it really completely unavailable at the time? It's one of Ophuls' great films IMHO, atmospheric, touching, with a great main actress and lots of style. I definitely thought of putting it on my list, but if its pushed back to the 40s, it will only rank higher there. Far less competition in that decade.
To change the topic:
Gropius wrote:.
Since you seem to have a marginally better general knowledge of the decade, perhaps you could recommend some other 30s titles that might appeal to a fellow Greenaway enthusiast. (I have a weakness for aesthetically lavish spectacle: The Scarlet Empress is my certain number 1, and the extraordinary Dieterle/Reinhardt Midsummer Night's Dream will be hovering somewhere in the top 10.) One that I still intend to check out before the deadline, on the strength of your recommendation earlier in the thread, is Willi Forst's Maskerade, which sounds great.
Check out
Maskerade by all means, especially when you rate the Sternberg and the Dieterle so high (both are on my list, too). Totally different film of course, but those who care for style in their 30s films simply cannot be disappointed by it (nor by any other film by or with Willi Forst from the 30s).
As to further recommendations: truly obvious choices for the discerning Greenaway fan and other formalists are Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the will and
Olympia, of course. The latter is definitely on my list: even 75 years later, its visual inventiveness is amazing, and its imagery set the standard for anything you see in modern day sports transmissions on TV (mostly these are far inferior, of course). The former won't be on my list, not for content reasons, but simply because "Triumph" gets terribly boring in its second half; after all has been said and done, we still see those guys marching through Nuremberg for a seemingly endless period of time.
But much more endearingly, I would recommend
Amphitryon by Reinhold Schünzel (1935), a version of the old Greek story with a highly satirical take on the Nazi regime (or so the general consensus says, I'm not quite sure about this), with completely artificial sets and staging, fine music and beautiful ladies. One of the real classics of German filmmaking in the 30s. Somewhat less of a classic, and certainly a little more silly, but equally enchanting is Gerhard Lamprecht's
Prinzessin Turandot (1934) (the story should be well known from Puccini's opera, though this isn't an adaptation of that work), again with over-the-top stage design, amazing camerawork by Fritz Arno Wagner (the man who shot "Nosferatu" and "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse", and also
Amphitryon), and starring the wonderful Käthe von Nagy and everybody's darling in Germany at the time, Willy Fritsch (who is also in
Amphitryon.)
Which finally brings me to my ultimate and greatest recommendation, the film which will be #1 on my list, and which is probably my favorite film of all times, only rivalled by "The Red Shoes", and that is
Der Kongress tanzt (1931), directed by Erik Charell. This was the first film Charell ever directed (and he directed only one more, "Caravan" in 1934, which I don't know), but he was a very successful stage director at the time and was specifically hired for this film by Erich Pommer of UFA-Production for this film, the most expensive and lavish production UFA had ever made (yes, it seems to have cost more than even "Metropolis"...) until then. Starring in it was the 'dream couple' of the Weimar film: the aforementioned Willy Fritsch and the lovely and most endearing Lilian Harvey, famously dubbed "The sweetest girl in the world" by the UFA marketing department, and right they were. But the star potential seems endless: Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover, Adele Sandrock... it seems UFA really tried to put everything they had into this film, and often this goes wrong. But not here.
At first glance,
Der Kongress tanzt may be seen as nothing more than a typical romatic German sound film operetta, in this case set in the time of the Vienna congress of 1815. The story is simple: lots of European monarchs come together in Vienna to newly distribute the continent among themselves. Among these is the Czar of Russia (Fritsch), and as he's a handsome fellow, no wonder that the simple salesgirl Christel (Harvey) falls for him. But the czar has a doppelganger doing his state business for him, and of course some misunderstandings arise from that. And then there's the evil Count Metternich (Veidt) who has plans of his own...
Well, this is all very bluntly put and can't account for this marvel of filmmaking, which constantly questions appearances and functions on various levels (not unlike
Maskerade in this respect), and under its glossy surface there lurks a highly satirical film, which (again like
Maskerade) however doesn't distract from seeing it as a purely enchanting, dreamlike piece of filmmaking.
This aspect is best expressed in the most famous sequence of the film (which is to this film what the ballet sequence is to "The Red Shoes"): Lilian Harvey's coach ride through the town to the czar's residence. Technically it's still completely amazing, as this lengthy and difficult-to-film sequence is for the most part done without cuts, and thus it's really sucking the viewer into the joy that our leading lady feels about this unexpected invitation. And at that moment she gets to sing the film's (and her) signature tune, which rendered into English goes like this: "This can only happen once/this won't ever come again/ this is too good to be true". And that last line, to me, is the key to the whole film: the enchantment and glossyness of all we see (and also in other films) is indeed too good to be true, and the rest of the film will be concerned with breaking up the artifice and showing us the truth beneath this glorious recreation of ancient Vienna: Veidt's political machinations, and of course the unhappy ending of the love affair. In the end we have the great Paul Hörbiger singing again the "Heurigenlied", the second famous song from this film and nominally a celebration of the old Vienna, but by then it sounds sad, reminding us that fairy tales like this, and the Vienna depicted here, have never been true; not even on screen.
All right then: it's obvious I can't praise this film high enough; it expresses everything that the Weimar sound film stands for and adds more than a bit on top of it.
Der Kongress tanzt is perfection in any conceivable way: direction, acting, stage design, script, you name it. If you don't watch it, you'll miss one of the greatest German films ever made. And surprisingly it's even available on an unexpensive disc from Universum, unfortunately without subs. But a subbed version is floating around, and I can also upload the inofficial, though pretty much definitive
subs somewhere if this should be required. And needless to say, I make this my second and last
SPOTLIGHT FILM.
.