The Great Waltz

It's been a long time since I enjoyed a Hollywood version of the same story, which was ruined in London with their cockney humor. And yes, that's exactly the case of this Viennese fairy tale. MGM was so on point that they added a little sentence in the opening credits about the genre we are in, so that nobody could really doubt it. So we're not looking for deviations from the real biography of Johann Strauss Jr. and the realities of Vienna (and the Vienna Woods) in the mid-19th century, but rather a tribute to the era of the waltz as a whole. While Hitchcock filmed it all in his own way as his own contribution to the operetta genre and rather negated the original biographical operetta, Hollywood was lucky to work with a Broadway adaptation. The result is an excellent musical melodrama, in which two antagonists play for their lives - the emotional Luise Rainer (an Oscar-winning actress originally from Germany) and the spunky Miliza Korjus (a Polish singer with an incredibly interesting fate). Fernand Gravey doesn't have as much chance to shine beside them, especially when his demonic rival is Lionel Atwill (a favorite villain from Josef von Sternberg's films). I really do understand why so many films on the same topic were made, because the experience is unbelievable. (26/04/2023)