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Sisi and Franz, the operetta. Merry bustle at the Bavarian manor, the Princess (Grace Moore) scampers in the stables to the vexation of her professeur de chant. "Mother said nothing on earth will make a lady out of me!" Her sister (Frieda Inescort) is unhappily engaged to the Viennese crown, her father (Walter Connolly) hands out perfunctory conjugal blessings: "Be faithful, if possible. Multiply. In short, take her away." Masquerades are the norm, the heroine infiltrates the palace disguised as a dressmaker and falls for the Emperor (Franchot Tone), who's fond of donning military garb to mingle with his festive subjects. Romance and scandal, plus trilling arias. "The village is in an uprrrrrrroar," cries the tavern owner (Herman Bing) finally driven to fits of whistling apoplexy. Josef von Sternberg on Lubitsch is virtually a painter's copy, he goes to town in the extravagant bric-a-brac of a fair teeming with fortune-tellers and mechanisms. (The infatuated protagonists vie for the top prize at the shooting gallery, a battalion of wooden figures marches out to celebrate her perfect score.) A sot's shaky promise, cf. Ophüls' Laughing Heirs. "I am here on matters of the state, and beer could be of no possible interest to me!" Habsburg in Columbia sets, a brief spell in the dungeon, a secret police of "secret jackasses." Royal duties and matters of the heart, a cheering view from the balcony dissipates the tension. "Did you catch that glint in her eye?" "She glints like an amateur. Watch me." A rather disprized fable, including by the filmmaker himself, though properly appreciated by Powell and Pressburger (Oh... Rosalinda!). With Raymond Walburn, Elisabeth Risdon, Nana Bryant, Victor Jory, and Thurston Hall. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |