Alô Janine!

The most sassy of all the Marika Rokk musicals made during the Third Reich is this, premiered in the fateful summer of 1939. It wears its American influences on its sleeve, and in some respects was the last of its kind, for though Rokk danced on through the war the music never again had that big band swing sound in quite the same way - in the 1940s American films were no longer shown on German cinema screens (which they had been pretty much throughout the 1930s) and later the Nazis progressively clamped down on swing and jazz. The concluding production number in this film, 'Musik, Musik, Musik' sounds quite astonishingly American. The look of the film is glossy and international too: the set for Musik, Musik, Musik is the sort of abstract art deco more usually associated with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the theatre is a Bauhaus dream and Rokk tap dances her way onto a row of glitter-encrusted grand pianos, which rise through the stage floor to meet her. Die Frau Meiner Traume may be more lavish, but this is more consistently entertaining, its simple plot - chorus girl wants to make it to the top - one of the universal themes of movie musicals. You'd struggle to find any kind of Nazi influence in this film: this was the sort of big-budget glossy entertainment film Goebbels had made in order to reassure ordinary Germans they were still living in a 'normal' country.

This is the film that signaled WW II. Its opening night was on July 1, 1939, and you can see how it aims to be "international": the stars are from Holland (Heesters) and Hungary (Roekk), the action takes place in Paris. Der Fuehrer himself liked the film, and commented "Well acted". A few days before the war started, a secret cablegram reached the UFA studios: to provide a copy of "Hallo Janine" with Polish subtitles at once. German film prepared to march along with German soldiers into Europe. Nevertheless, this is a slice of purest escapism, as far from the designed reality as it can get. And a pretty good one at that.

I'd seen the film years ago but recently I was listening to Musik Musik Musik on my phone and a friend asked me if I liked Nazi music. This necessitated a long discussion about how international the film actually was, how there was no propaganda in it, how Rökk was almost certainly a very brave spy for the communists during the war just as Zarah Leander had been. Unlike the Swedish diva Rökk socialised with the upper echelons of the Nazi party passing on indiscretions from Goebbels himself.

Once that was out of the way, I could talk about the film itself, its hoary plot which nonetheless convinced, the hummable songs, the fabulous sets, the synchronised dancing and singing. It's a fanatastic spectacle.

This is worth a revival even in this day and age. I'd watch it again in an instant.