The Emperor Waltz

What a nice delightful film this turned out to be. I'm in my musical phase of movies, and while this really cannot be classified as a true "musical", it does have a couple on nice songs and a short dance sequence. I guess you could classify this as a "quasi-musical". Anyway, the story is fun with the typical Billy Wilder political overtones that do not detract from the plot line. The scenery is great, as is Bing Crosby and Richard Haydin. Joan Fontaine is fine in what is asked of her. The real stars are the two dogs. Their scenes are delightful, as is the film. While there is a tad of dramatics at the end, it all turns out fine as expected. Would have like to have the fade-out of the two dogs cuddling up. See this one for a royal treat.

The mystery is that it took me so long to succumb to the charms of this musical. There are few writer/directors I admire more than Billy Wilder and few entertainers I enjoy more than Bing Crosby. I don't know what I expected when they got together, but I guess it wasn't "The Emperor Waltz". Initial disappointment was erased on a recent viewing.

Our story is set in the long ago Austria of Emperor Franz Josef and concerns the love affair between a haughty widowed countess (Joan Fontaine) and a brash American salesman (Crosby). Ditto her purebred poodle and his mutt. There is a lot of talk about class differences and bloodlines and, through the years, this has been my major gripe with the script. Perhaps at the time in the late 40s Bracket and Wilder felt the need to make some sort of a statement, but it's a tad heavy handed and detracts from the fun - and there is fun.

The musical numbers are presented wittily. For "In Dreams I Kiss Your Hand" Bing sings, then brings in a piano, then two policemen pick up violins and then the domestic staff starts to dance. When our countess swoons after a few boo-boo-boo's, you know it's all in fun. The uninspired humorist often remarks when watching a musical "where did the orchestra come from?". In the enchanting "The Kiss in Your Eyes", there is no need to ask as an entire village puts bow to string to accompany this most stirring of love songs.

The Technicolor filming is sumptuous and truly befitting the operetta-like sensibility of the movie.

Joan Fontaine is every inch the royal lady, looking lovely in her costumes and easily handling the comic and dramatic portions of the script. A nice transition from her young, vulnerable characterizations to the more confident females she portrayed in the 50s.

Early in the film Bing Crosby tends to shout his way through Virgil, but his character is a lone fish out of water with no kibitzing pal such as a Hope or Fitzgerald. Once he starts to sing - well, like the Countess, it is easy to fall for the go-getting salesman.

Lucile Watson is a delight as a dowager princess with a penchant for storytelling and for our Countess' profligate father played in fine style by Roland Culver.

The top performance comes from Richard Hadyn as Emperor F-J himself. Unrecognizable under the whiskers and make-up, and foregoing his famous nasally precise delivery, Mr. Hadyn gives us a very interesting Franz-Josef. A petulant, funny, irritating, thoughtful and memorable character. You will pinch yourself to remind you of who you are watching.

I heartily recommend this musical of much charm. Mystery solved.

It would be hard to find two consecutive feature films by a director of significance as different from one another as "The Lost Weekend" and "The Emperor Waltz", the former as hysterically hard hitting as anything Hollywood produced in the 'forties, the latter pure schmaltzy escapism. The first and most obvious conclusion is that Billy Wilder, as part of his contract to Paramount, was doing as he was told in producing a piece of box office confectionery. And yet there is no escaping the credits which bill the script as being by Wilder himself and Charles Brackett. So he must have known what he was doing. Superficially it looks and sounds like a nostalgic recreation of Wilder's home country, Austria, during a golden period before the First World War when the only thing to unsettle the court of the Emperor Franz Joseph was the entry of an itinerant American phonograph salesman and his mongrel dog. It is said that it might have been a different film but for the fact that Wilder had to accept Bing Crosby for the leading role and that he had to cater for the audience expectations of one of the most popular stars of the day, hence the odd song, though scarcely enough to make it a musical in the fully accepted sense. There is the odd witty line such as Franz Joseph's remark that were he to shave off his whiskers it would create consternation in changing his image on the country's currency. Apart from this it is hard to find much in the way of Wilder's characteristically cracking dialogue. The parallel romance between Bing and a countess and their dogs Buttons and Sheherazade rather palls after a while but the pretty visuals with the Canadian Rockies substituting for the Austrian Tyrol have some compensations. Bing plays his part with star flair although the same can hardly be said of Joan Fontaine as the countess. Aside from the virtue of a gorgeous hair-do, she acts with a stilted woodenness that is light years away from her work in "Rebecca" and "Jane Eyre". Still there is generally something engaging to catch the eye including one wonderfully kitschy moment when all the lasses from a village where violins are made play their instruments. When Wilder made "The Emperor Waltz" he already had to his credit that immortal film noir "Double Indemnity". 1947/48 must have been a particularly bad period for him as he followed his Austrian romance with easily his worst effort, "A Foreign Affair", a third-rate "Ninotchka" tale set in postwar Berlin with Jean Arthur, an otherwise good actress, hardly a match for Garbo. For all its faults "The Emperor Waltz" is infinitely more enjoyable though there is little indication of the talent that was to produce "Some Like It Hot", "The Apartment" and "Kiss Me, Stupid".

According to a new book out on Billy Wilder, Wilder had a much different film in mind than what emerged here. He was a contract director for Paramount at the time this was made with a few hits under his belt. And he was assigned to direct this film with Bing Crosby who was the biggest name in movies when this came out.

Crosby had a whole different film in mind and what Bing wanted Paramount gave him at that point. Wilder wanted a biting satire on the Franz Joseph court and he also wanted a the killing of the puppies, the offspring of Crosby's and Joan Fontaine's dogs to be an allegory for genocide. Crosby knew what his audiences expected from him and he opted for a lighter treatment.

The result was a second rate Billy Wilder movie, but a first class Bing Crosby film. Unlike in the thirties when Paramount just depended on Crosby's personality to put over a film, they gave this one the full A treatment. The outdoor sequences were shot in the Canadian Rockies and they serve as a great Alpine background. Though its muted, Wilder still gets some of his cynical point of view into Crosby's phonograph salesman who woos a member of Viennese royalty played by Joan Fontaine. Roland Culver who is Fontaine's father is also pretty good as the impoverished count who is quite willing to sell his title in marriage to anyone who can afford him.

Great vehicle for the winning Crosby personality.

This is not a great Billy Wilder film, but any film he's involved in is worth looking at. Like Orson Welles, even when he's below par in his work he's ahead of the pack. Here Wilder is going back to his roots - he came from Austria, and just left it before the Nazi seized control (I think two aunts of his died in concentration camps). Wilder knew what the highbound, tradition controlled court and government of Austria Hungary was like, with it's unofficial racism towards Jews and Slavs. Only Hungarians (by force) got equal treatment to the Austrians in the government and army. If Jews did well in the professions or business they were hated for it. Only Erich von Stroheim would have had a similar idea of the truth, but he looked elsewhere at the sordidness of the court - at it's sexual peccadillos.

But the film is not successful in capturing that image. It comes closest when Richard Haydn (as the old Emperor Franz Joseph - possibly his best straight acting job/though his performance as a sadistic nobleman in FOREVER AMBER is close to it)tells Bing Crosby why the marriage between him and Joan Fontaine would fail. Fontaine would soon be pining for those fine aristocratic experiences and events that she would never be able to go back to once she married a commoner. Haydn compares aristocrats to snails - serene and haughty in their little shells, but remove them from their shells and they die. It may be wrong here (the movie ends with Crosby and Fontaine united), but in reality it hasn't always worked. Look at the tradition bound Windsor family and their marriage fiascos.

Oddly enough, just as Wilder failed in his attempt to make a film about the Austro-Hungarian Empire Max Ophuls made the classic Viennese romance of that period - A LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN, starring Fontaine and Louis Jordan. It was not on the scale of THE EMPEROR WALTZ, but it is better remembered and enjoyed, and gave Fontaine a memorably tragic character. If one wants to get a glimmer of the zeitgeist of old Wien see the Ophuls movie. And if not that see a British film starring Lili Palmer, BEWARE OF PITY, which also captures the neurosis of the upper classes in that age. As for THE EMPEROR WALTZ, watch it for Haydn's fine performance, Crosby's singing and comic moments (when he turns a phonograph into a 19th Century berry juicer, which is a lovely little scene), and Roland Culver's social plotting. You'll find these all quite enough to enjoy the movie.