An Exercise In Nonsense

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie was remade by Ernst Marischka, the original story writer of this film, in 1955 with Romy Schneider as Die Deutschmeister. having seen both the movies, I found that, the second one was far superior to this, which is a rarity. Normally when the movies are re-made, the so-called superiority is attained by more glitz, and in the way, it weakens the plot. But not in this case. I like both the heroines, Deanna as well as Romy and incidentally they were almost the same age when their respective movies were made, Deanna must have been about 18 and Romy about 17. If I compare the two, Deanna was a bit superior, as far as this movie-pair is concerned, but Romy matured only after she stopped Sissy and similar movies. The other superiority of this movie is obviously the Deanna's singing (Probably, to overcome that, Marischka didn't make the other one Musical). And the male lead, Robert Cummins too (in my opinion) was better than Siegfried Breuer. But there it stops. The plot and the story was far superior and engrossing in the German movie, whereas this particular movie has too many loop-holes in the plot. If I leave alone the actors, who were American, Marischka and Pasternak were Austro-Hungarians, Koster was German, under this conditions the mistakes made seem quite surprising. Thankfully Marischka corrected them, and also changed the plot a bit, in the German movie. Probably due to these glaring errors, I could not really enjoy the movie despite Deanna and some very good songs. The role of Koster's future wife, Peggy Moran seems to be interesting. She is introduced as Archduchess, but definitely she wasn't one. Emperor's Aide, Wiedlemeyer should have contradicted at that point, after all, he might have missed Counts, Minor Princess' , some Duchess' but definitely not an Arch-duchess. In addition, her behavior, or even Marten's didn't fit the chair. Similar to this there are many other loop-holes, including the meeting with Emperor, where Deanna didn't really maintain the 'Awe' which would be natural, or later, the attempt to refuse Kaiser's invitation (which everyone should know is an Order in a disguise and are non-refuse-able). To summarise, watching once was a bit drag, but not too much of it, but it is not repeatable, the other one, being more coherent, is a far better watch.

My only complaint is that the film itself needs a good restoration to bring out the award-nominated cinematography of SPRING PARADE--and a minor complaint is that DEANNA DURBIN should have had at least two more songs to sing. Otherwise, it's a complete delight.Her catchiest number is "Waltzing On Clouds" which is reprised at the finale and used for the big ballroom scene. It's a sort of Cinderella story set in Vienna, about a naive country bumpkin who meets her Prince Charming (ROBERT CUMMINGS) who happens to be a drummer in the local band. He's also a musician and love develops when Deanna backs his musical aspirations in a most unusual way.S.Z. SAKALL stands out as the local baker who employs Deanna in his shop. As in most Durbin films, a series of mishaps and mistaken identities run through the story, only to be patched up before the windup. HENRY STEPHENSON, REGINALD DENNY, SAMUEL S. HINDS, ANNE GWYNNE, FRANKLIN PANGBORN and others help keep the story bubbling along with pleasant performances.Henry Koster gives a sparkling touch to all the musical moments and Deanna is in fine voice. Robert Cummings again displays comic finesse as he always does in light romantic comedies.One of Durbin's best films from the early '40s and it should be available on DVD.

It's a crying shame the studio never released this on video...I have seen this movie and it is easily one of Deanna's best! Durbin comes off with even more of her famous spunk and "atitude" that we all know and love. Her supporting cast is first rate and the songs really add color and warmth to the picture. Set in Vienna Austria,this is the only movie where the storyline is contained fully outside of the USA. It happens to be Deanna's shortest film but it is not lacking in the entertainment department as it will have you chuckling constantly especially the beginning of the movie where Deanna's character Ilonka tries to sell her goat!

Despite some of Durbin's best songs and technical proficiency all the way around, this is a major disappointment for a Durbin fan who adores every film the musical star made up to 1940. It's BORING - poorly paced and dogged by a weak story line. (I was privileged to see a superior transfer, so I attribute my lack of enjoyment to the film itself.) Romance is given short shrift, with leading man Robert Cummings showing up very late in the film.Not as bad as Up in Central Park, which Universal Home Video somehow did release, but not a film one should be praying to see released on home video.