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When the Marquis de Pontignac falls off his horse; he is seemingly brought back from death by the voice of a mysterious woman. He believes that his savior is the Empress of France when it is truly her hairdresser Juliette.

Lilian Harvey and Conrad Veidt in Ich und die Kaiserin (1933)

Conrad Veidt outclasses Charles Boyer in a musical comedy

Although the German-language DVD lists its running time as 82 minutes, the movie seems to run longer. Whether this is due to actual fact or simply to a sense of ennui, it&#39;s hard to tell. Certainly some scenes tend to run a little longer than good pacing would dictate, but it&#39;s hard to tell where to cut. The opening setup with the crazy inventors, for instance, certainly outstays its appeal, but if you take the scissors to it, you&#39;ll destroy Heinz Rühmann&#39;s wonderful reaction when he sits down at the piano. Similarly, despite his position near the bottom of the cast list, Hans Deppe has an enormous amount of footage. Admittedly, the first or fourth time he strokes his mustache is mildly amusing, but when he repeats this action for the twentieth close-up, the joke is wearing a little thin. On the other hand, Hubert von Meyerinck&#39;s habit of jangling his medals is always super-hilarious, no matter how many times he performs this feat. In fact, whenever he comes on screen, we&#39;re actually waiting for him to do it with the keenest anticipation. I wouldn&#39;t like to prune any of Miss Harvey&#39;s footage, despite the fact that some of Behn-Grund&#39;s close-ups are none too flattering. The same warts-and-all approach – although to a much lesser extent – applies to the photographer&#39;s work with Mady Christians. On the other hand, Friedel Shuster, admittedly a most attractive personality, but hardly what you would call top-of-the-scale sexy, is always beautifully photographed. In fact, Behn-Grund&#39;s split-personality approach to this whole movie, would strike most viewers as rather odd, but maybe it&#39;s typical of German films of this period. Anyway, half the movie is lit in film noir style with heavy shadows, even though this is a musical comedy from first to last. And Behn-Grund doesn&#39;t spare his cast. One innocuous continuity scene with Conrad Veidt is lit with Veidt almost completely hidden in a well of darkness! I must admit that I was rather dubious about a musical comedy-farce in which Conrad Veidt was cast as the romantic hero. And I thought to myself that Charles Boyer, who played the role in both the French and English versions, would most certainly be a far better choice. But Boyer received bad reviews, would you believe? The general feeling among the critical fraternity was that he played the role &quot;adequately&quot; at best. To my surprise, Veidt, though certainly cast against type, is rather appealing. True, Conrad has hardly the panache that a Bing Crosby clone would bring to the role, but his more serious demeanor does throw the spotlight on Heinz Rühmann. Herr Rühmann, incidentally, is the reason many people would buy this DVD – not Veidt, Harvey or Christians. And it&#39;s good to say that he&#39;s treated rather well by both script and director. In fact, Rühmann is such a delight from first to last that he saves the movie, almost single-handedly. Best of all, the final scene is absolutely wonderful and well worth spending time and money on Ich und die Kaiserin. Hollander, who has directed quite ably throughout (even if has allowed some scenes to run too long), finally hits his stride with this lavishly staged and costumed number which is brilliantly – brilliantly! – undercut by the frowziest prompter ever seen in a movie. What a superb idea! What a simply marvelous climax! It makes A Night at the Opera look absolutely fourth-rate by comparison. So for this reason alone, disregarding all the other entertainment this movie offers, it&#39;s a number one must-have DVD for the permanent collection. It&#39;s pity it&#39;s not sub-titled, but even if you don&#39;t understand a word of German, you should be able to follow the plot with reasonable facility.

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Ich und die Kaiserin

A dashing marquis bends from his horse when he discovers a lost garter in the woods and falls. During his delirium he is serenaded by a little hairdresser. She is the person who lost the garter to begin with and has only come to get it back having borrowed it from her employer--the empress of France. The marquis mistakenly thinks he was nursed by the empress, herself, and decides to woo her. This was Lilian Harvey&#39;s last UFA film before she left for the Hollywood. It has a weird charm, opulent sets and a great cast, but somehow never quite comes together. There isn&#39;t much chemistry between Harvey and Conrad Veidt or her second lead Heinz Ruehmann. This may have something to do with the melancholy of it&#39;s being pretty near the end of the Weimar film era and the heydey of Harvey&#39;s career. Many of the most key people at UFA had already begun to emigrate and be forced out of the business. The tunes are good and the little subplot with Offenbach gives the film a chance to use some bits of operetta to comic advantage. Somehow, however, the film probably wasn&#39;t the best send-off for UFA&#39;s biggest star.

I could not believe it but war films dot com had put out a digital print on DVD. Normally there quality is either poor or fair. When I told them how good their print was they raised their prices to 1 dollar more. Me in my big mouth. This was Conrad Veidt&#39;s last film in Germany and Mady Christians. This had subtitles so I didn&#39;t have to guess. Inspite of that I still had trouble with the plot.Conrad Portrays Marquis De Pontingnac. He&#39;s about to go on a fox hunt until three men want to see him.Two of them are inventors. Ones trying to introduce the petal bicycle and the second one the telephone. This is suppose to take place in France during the Empress Eugenie period. So this is silly. He finds them both useless.The third one is Didier, played by Heinz Ruhmann, who is an assistant orchestra conductor of the theater. Who goes to the marquee to inform that Offenbach could not write the music for his dance but he has his own composition, A song written for his fiancé Juliette. But his girl friend Annabelle , who&#39;s an actress played by Friedel Schuster, comes in and show him her riding Habit and informs him he&#39;s going to be late for the fox hunt. Lillian Harvey play&#39;s Heinz Ruhmanns fiancé Juliette who&#39;s the hairdresser for Empress Eugenia, played by Mady Christians is riding on a cart and notices that one of her garters are gone.Well during the fox Hunt the marquee notices that the dogs are fighting over something it&#39;a Juliette&#39;s garter. He takes it for good luck. but has an accident and becomes unconscious. Julieete gets off the cart to trace where the garter she borrowed from the empress , fell. That when she notices that the marquee in the stretcher is holding the garter being taken to the army barracks.She tries to go in with them to get her garter but the guards won&#39;t let her. so she sneaks around Looking for him. The military doctor states that because he didn&#39;t get up from the horse he does not have long to live. As the doctor puts some clothes over his eyes, He asks for his last request. One of those request is Marianne ,played by Kate Kuhl, whom he saw singing wanting her to sing for him again. The military doctor see&#39;s Juliette and insist that she goes into the room and sing for him.Well she does and since his eyes are covered up by some cloth , he doesn&#39;t notice who is. So she sings for him and then sees her garter and picks it up.After he recovers , when every one is mourning him thinking he&#39;s dead. He sees the real Marianne and she tell him she hasn&#39;t sang in 10 years and now owns a bird shop.Now he has to search for her. He get&#39;s Heinz Ruhmann to look for the song he heard her sing in the area of the theater where he has the songs. As Juliette visiting him he&#39;s not paying attention to her and he tells her why. She realizes that that she has to go to the marquee to let him know,the marquee think then it&#39;s the empress who was serenading him. So he goes to see her. As he approaches the house he hear Juliette and thinks thats the empress.Her aide, played by German character actor stalwart Hubert Von Meyerinck. as soon as the marquee enters the room Juliette already stops the singing .As she tries to tell him. The Empress,played by Mady ,comes in and ask what he wants . He notices why she isn&#39;t responding to him after he complimented that she sang to him while he was still injured and he would keep it a secret. She still doesn&#39;t know what she talking about. When he leaves, her aide hears about it and thinking that they had a ta tetate, he sends the invitation to Marquee to come to the violin concert that the Empress Eugenia is having with her nieces.So he gets the invitation Didier thinks it&#39;s his fiancé that sent it. the message tells her him to meet at the gardens. So he shows up. The Empress wonders why he&#39;s here. Juliette tries to give him the message to meet her at the garden, He finally get&#39;s it. Goes to the Garden but it&#39;s Juliette. she tires to tell him the the empress isn&#39;t coming. But she comes in and he makes a pass at her she shocked and doesn&#39;t know why. He asked her to meet him at his place . The empress is shocked. he leaves.Juliette tells the Empress without letting her know it was her that he thinks she is the one who serenaded him. She feels complimented about it and thinks she might see him, But Juliette suggest that she doesn&#39;t.Heinz Ruhmann is now going to do the conducting for the operetta. He has Broken up with Juliette. Meyerck shows y up at the marquees place pretending to be a Baron. Then warns him that there going to be a scandal unless this is stopped but Julliette shows up instead. Dressed up with the empresses cape. He know recognizes her.Annabell shows up Jeliouse that Julie has taken away her boy friend.But hes late for the opera. So Juliette helps her ex by forcing to go back to the stage to do her work with a sward. He gets her there on time but she tries to get out of it Annabelle. Well she goes down stairs to the are below the stage she&#39;s sad that she left Marquee. Then by surprise he&#39;s down there and they kiss. Uncut unexpurgated, notorious Nazi musical, Banned by Hollywood, Available

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Ich und die Kaiserin

Conrad Veidt outclasses Charles Boyer in a musical comedy

Me and the Empress

The best print I ever saw

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