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A comedy of liquids, wine and champagne mainly but kicking off with a mighty gulp of the Rhine as seen from a moving train. The vino magnate passes on, his relatives disapprove of alcohol but come for the will: "More soda and lemonade has been served here today than in the past ten years!" The vast vineyards go to the young nephew (Heinz Rühmann), a jingle-writer who "hasn't realized that life is serious," on the condition that he stays sober for one full month. ("I've never been so thirsty," he mutters in the cellar surrounded by giant barrels.) The old uncle (Max Adalbert) prefers mineral water while his wife (Ida Wüst) sips surreptitiously from a rum flask, the two try to spike the scion's coffee to seize the fortune for themselves. The rival label must also be faced, mistaken identities ensue, the plan of the late mensch includes a spot for the competitor's daughter (Lien Deyers). "Unbelievable. Even now that he's dead, he has to annoy us." A sustained effervescence from Max Ophüls, the full equal of Hollywood artists like La Cava or Sandrich. The hero accepts the challenge but nearly wrecks things with a toast, the family dog's bark halts him, "mein wahrer freund." A dash of Brewster's Millions, a song aboard the steamship, a porthole used as a camera iris. All is resolved at the mountaintop sanitarium, where only milk is served. "You're not trying to seduce me, are you?" "Ja!" Clair recalls the recorded testament in And Then There Were None, Wilder in Sabrina absorbs the marriage-merger. With Lizzi Waldmüller, Julius Falkenstein, Walter Janssen, and Elfriede Jera. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |