SPOILERS:
The team Walter Reisch (screenplay) and Karl Hartl (director) had learned and worked with Korda in Berlin and could now realize a series of films in Vienna, which urgently need to be rediscovered. Everything is just right here: just the input sequence. His Highness (Willi Forst) should abdicate, the Cabinet waits in the hall, but he does not speak. But from the top you can hear music and laughter. "It has to be," says the prime minister. The Hofmarschall walks along the long corridors, the camera follows him, he knocks on the door, he knocks again and then the door opens a crack, you see the head of a pretty woman, probably in a negligee, and she says insolently: "After midnight, I'm the one who rules". Close the door. Our imagination is enough to imagine what happens behind the door. Such hints are reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch. Then the trifles - the fountain pen that the abdicating monarch retains, the bouquet of flowers that wanders back and forth, even when Willi Forst sings ("I have a lot of homesickness"), makes it easy to be there. A movie in which a lot of tuxedo is worn, which looks casual, light, funny, allusive, ironic (which monarch would like to thank you?). The photograph by Franz Planner (later USA) is meticulous, tender in transitions, and playful lightness. And one more thing: Hartl was 33 years old, Reisch and Forst 29 years old when they made this movie. It is filled with youth, fun and a passion for life.
The team Walter Reisch (screenplay) and Karl Hartl (director) had learned and worked with Korda in Berlin and could now realize a series of films in Vienna, which urgently need to be rediscovered. Everything is just right here: just the input sequence. His Highness (Willi Forst) should abdicate, the Cabinet waits in the hall, but he does not speak. But from the top you can hear music and laughter. "It has to be," says the prime minister. The Hofmarschall walks along the long corridors, the camera follows him, he knocks on the door, he knocks again and then the door opens a crack, you see the head of a pretty woman, probably in a negligee, and she says insolently: "After midnight, I'm the one who rules". Close the door. Our imagination is enough to imagine what happens behind the door. Such hints are reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch. Then the trifles - the fountain pen that the abdicating monarch retains, the bouquet of flowers that wanders back and forth, even when Willi Forst sings ("I have a lot of homesickness"), makes it easy to be there. A movie in which a lot of tuxedo is worn, which looks casual, light, funny, allusive, ironic (which monarch would like to thank you?). The photograph by Franz Planner (later USA) is meticulous, tender in transitions, and playful lightness. And one more thing: Hartl was 33 years old, Reisch and Forst 29 years old when they made this movie. It is filled with youth, fun and a passion for life.
