Reviews

Germany in February 1945: Hitler was in his Berlin bunker, the Russians were advancing through East Prussia, the British were bombing Dresden, the Americans were preparing to cross the Rhine – and in Bavaria actors and technicians were making "Dreimal Komödie." Although this film was released in 1949, it had been completed four years earlier. From watching it, you would never guess.

"Dreimal Komödie" is a silly, escapist, romantic comedy, set in a prosperous peaceful Germany where politics never impinge. In style, it is very close to what Americans call screwball comedy. The humour arises from the characters telling preposterous lies without the slightest hesitation (and never resenting being told preposterous lies either). Ilse Brand (Margot Hielscher), a young couturier, is worried that her schoolgirl sister, Ulla, may be posing for a sculptor named Professor von Arnim, who specialises in nudes and has an unconscious habit of unbuttoning other people's clothing. Going to rescue Ulla from supposed moral danger, she meets Arnim and his musician friend Geiger. Both are instantly smitten with Ilse, and the rest of the film consists of their pursuing her with a persistence that would amount to harassment in reality - only "Dreimal Komödie" is always very far from reality. The title, "Three times a comedy," seems to relate to the deceptions practised when the men follow her to the countryside: Ilse pretends that her cousin is her fiancé, Geiger pretends that he has a broken leg, and Arnim pretends that the house in which they are staying was once the home of Goethe.

Personally, I found the relentless levity of "Dreimal Komödie" just too inconsequential, but it is a well-made film of its kind. In playing a sculptor, Ferdinand Marian (Professor von Arnim) may be unconvincing, but in playing a humorously urbane skirt-chaser, he is highly accomplished; his 'star quality' is evident. Paul Dahlke makes a thoroughly competent foil as Herr Geiger. Margot Hielscher is not so skilled in comedy, but she is beautiful, and her comparatively straight acting makes it a repeated surprise when Ilse is shown to be as dishonest and mischievous as the men.

What kept me watching "Dreimal Komödie" was the consciousness of when and where it was made. That a film like this could emerge from a nation in the abyss says something about the human spirit - though what exactly is perhaps debatable. Of course, the British during the Blitz made George Formby and Arthur Askey films, but these often contained a hint of patriotism. There is nothing of that sort here, only frivolousness with an under-current of sex, although Marian had earlier taken leading roles in Nazi propaganda films and Hielscher regularly entertained the troops as a singer. Whatever you may think of the comedy, circumstances make this film rather extraordinary.

The three-act operetta "Leányvásár" by Viktor Jacobi was a big success in Budapest in 1911, and an English adaptation entitled "The Marriage Market" did good business in London and New York two years later. The work has subsequently disappeared from the English-speaking stage, but it evidently retained enough popularity in its native country in 1985 for Hungarian television to make this version of it. It is not a lavish production. Indeed, it looks as if the singers, costumes, and sets of an operetta theatre were simply transported to a studio and a few outdoor locations. On the credit side, this means that the principals are capable operetta performers, and they give an enjoyable performance of the score. On the other hand, stage routines and props do not appear to advantage in the open air, especially under a grey sky in a stiff breeze.

"Leányvásár" is set in California, and the first act is essentially 'cowboy operetta'. This is decidedly incongruous, as Jacobi's music is firmly in the Central European tradition. As a European western, the show might be said to exist somewhere in the wide cultural space between "Carry on Cowboy" and "The Girl of the Golden West". The comic fisticuffs in the saloon bar go on and on. Into this unaccustomed milieu come two Austro-Hungarian aristocrats, Count Rottenberg and his silly son Fritz, who are in the USA to find a wealthy bride for the latter. Lucy Harrison, the daughter of a millionaire senator, and her friend Bessy are with them when they crash their car near a 'Wild West' one-horse town. There they find the annual 'marriage market' taking place. Lucy assumes this to be some kind of light-hearted folk festival and pairs off with cowboy Tom Miggles. Then she learns that he takes it quite seriously and considers her his wife. Senator Harrison hurries her away, but Tom is not to be shaken off. Of course, there is a romantic happy ending.

Even as operettas go, "Leányvásár" is pretty formulaic, alternating between love duets for the leads (Lucy and Tom) and humorous duets for the second couple (Bessy and Fritz), with intervals of unsophisticated comedy. Some of the songs are memorable, however, especially the one really American-style number in the score, the ragtime duet "Gilolo". The (misguided?) attempt to 'open up' the stage show with outside filming adds a certain amount of extra humour, e.g. Lucy 'singing' while swimming and clutching a lifebuoy in a rather choppy sea. Operetta enthusiasts will enjoy the chance to make the acquaintance of an unfamiliar work. Others will view it as a curiosity at best. If Hungarian singing cowboys are what you're after, this is the show for you.

"Just a song of Paris, Music made for two, Brings me sweetest mem'ries, Memories of you!" The quality of the lyric of the title-song is broadly indicative of the quality of the film. That said, it is not a romance, but definitely a comedy, albeit one with a few (not very credible) romantic moments.

Matthew Ibbetson (Dennis Price) is a rather prim young man who has recently succeeded his father as head of a family firm producing patent medicines. Concerned about falling sales in France, he visits Paris and becomes enamoured of Clémentine (Anne Vernon), a cabaret singer. Shortly afterwards, she turns up in London and asks him to set her up in an apartment. Not the sort to contemplate keeping a mistress, Matthew thinks he ought to marry Clémentine, but he anticipates opposition from his overbearing mother (Hermione Baddeley). Worse still, an absurdly jealous old admirer (Mischa Auer) follows the singer from Paris, vowing melodramatically to kill his rival. Farcical incidents ensue.

"Song of Paris" falls between two stools. The farce is not sufficiently sustained to induce real hilarity, while the wit is never sharp enough for the piece to succeed as light comedy. In the last ten minutes or so, the silliness of the humour abruptly moves up a gear (and failed to carry me along with it, so the end did not come too soon). I see that Frank Muir and Denis Norden had a hand in the script. The cheerfully unsubtle tone does indeed recall 1950s radio comedy, and, for all its efforts to evoke the ambiance of 'Gay Paree,' the film is every bit as primly English as Mr Ibbetson. At first, Clémentine comes across as a good-natured courtesan, interested in the foreigner chiefly on account of his wealth. Once in London, however, she turns into a 'nice' girl who wants to get married and settle down – when the film might have been funnier had she retained more of her original character.

Dotted through the film are three or four songs. Clémentine sits at the piano, waves her hands over the keyboard, and the sound of an orchestra comes from nowhere to support her vocalising. Musical interludes of this kind seem to have been popular in the 1950s. Nowadays they seem embarrassingly phoney.

"Song of Paris" raises the occasional smile. No film can be all bad that has such standard British comic turns of the era as Kynaston Reeves as a vicar and Richard Wattis as a civil servant. Dennis Price, Hermione Baddeley, and Mischa Auer are all proficient comic actors, moreover, who do their best with the material given them - which only makes the viewer wish they'd been given something better. Ibbetson is perhaps too naïve a character to suit Price's talents; just a few years later the role would surely have gone to Ian Carmichael.

"Meine Tochter und Ich" is a light-hearted and sometimes sentimental comedy of family life in an affluent middle-class setting. Its basic premise, however, could quite as easily have been the starting point for an austere psychological drama indebted to Freud and Strindberg. Dr Stegemann is a middle-aged widower whose life revolves exclusively around his twenty-one year-old daughter, Biggi, and his work as a dentist. Father and daughter work side by side, moreover, as Biggi is his dental nurse. She is a pretty young woman who closely resembles her mother, who died when she was an infant. They dance together at a cocktail bar, where it amuses Stegemann to lead strangers to suppose that he has a very youthful girlfriend. He does not know that Biggi has a boyfriend who wants to marry her. When he does find out, his jealousy drives him to try and prevent the match.

Have no fear. Freud and Strindberg are never allowed a look in. "Meine Tochter und Ich" plays out in that bright and breezy cinematic world where troubles only exist in order to be overcome and everything turns out happily in the end. Along the way, there are a few mildly amusing moments, but there are also some rather awkward ones. Many a comedy successfully employs the idea of a grown-up child struggling against an over-possessive parent, it having been a theatrical staple for centuries, but the tone here seems to me misjudged. Dr Stegemann is not an obviously comic figure; Heinz Rühmann invests him with a sensitive and sympathetic side. The most uncomfortable scenes in the film are the sentimental ones, when he looks sadly at Biggi to the strains of a romantic waltz. It may be absurd to take a piece of commercial light entertainment at all seriously, but I could not entirely dismiss from my mind those psychological issues. Any real-life Biggi is likely to have a difficult time coping with the rival demands of husband and father – and who would want Dr Stegemann as a father-in-law?

The original stage musical "Im weissen Rössl" was a huge international hit in the early 1930s. It probably enjoyed success beyond its merits, but it did have certain factors in its favour. First, amid the turmoil of the Great Depression, it harked back nostalgically to the 'good old days' of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Secondly, it was a spectacle, with fancy stage effects, a large chorus, and elaborate choreography. Thirdly, its music appealed to a wide audience by mixing traditional Viennese operetta with Broadway styles.

Strangely, the makers of this 1960 film adaptation, while basically retaining the original plot, dispensed with most of the show's advantages. For a start, they opted for a modern setting: the girls wear bikinis, and Sigismund arrives by helicopter. The Emperor Franz Josef does not appear in this production! True, the natural scenery of the Wolfgangsee is more spectacular than any stage set, but there is little ensemble singing and dancing. As for the music, they simply ditched the majority of it and appointed a largely non-singing cast. Only six or seven songs remain, and they are nearly all shortened and assigned to Leopold (Peter Alexander). The leading lady (Josefa), with nothing to sing, makes very little impression. In the absence of songs, the backing track keeps repeating a couple of the main melodies in jazzy re-arrangements under the dialogue.

Take the music out of a musical, and you are left with very thin fare. The main substitute here is slapstick in the style of Norman Wisdom, e.g., the accidental water-skiing scene and the business with the fire-hose and the toupée. Peter Alexander, apparently a star in Austria, clowns his way through the film energetically, but it isn't enough.

Visually, the film is striking. The very bright colours are those of picture postcards and holiday brochures, which is apt for a story set in the tourism industry. Of course, IMDb's inclusion of 'Kitsch' as a keyword is absolutely justified. Unfortunately, "The White Horse Inn" (1960) lacks the charm that might have redeemed it.

This is one of a series of Lehár operettas filmed in the early 1970s. Really to enjoy them you probably need to have nostalgic feelings about West German television of that era, for they are very much of their time indeed in terms of both technology and taste (or the lack of it, some might say). Otherwise perhaps the only reason today for watching such a kitsch 1973 version of a 1925 operetta is the absence of alternative performances on DVD.

Lehár's "Paganini" is a typically romantic confection, very loosely based on the historical connection between Niccolo Paganini, the great violinist, and Princess Anna Elisa, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. For television, the sequence of scenes has been revised a little to achieve a greater variety of settings, but the film follows the original libretto fairly closely. Though production values and lighting are decidedly stagey, this can be tolerated, I think, given that it was a stage-work in the first place. The lead roles are taken by impressive vocalists. Antonio Theba is very well cast as Paganini. While failing perhaps to convey the imperious side of Anna Elisa, Teresa Stratas sounds splendid and looks very pretty and sympathetic.

However, there are serious drawbacks to this production. For a start, the singers are obviously miming to their own recordings. In itself, this might not necessarily be a major problem, only they do it in a sadly misguided way, for which the director must bear responsibility. On screen, for the sake of visual realism, the characters sing to each other in an intimate, conversational fashion. On the sound track, to do justice to the music, they sing in full operatic voices. Consequently, while lip synchronisation with the words is not bad, in the absence of appropriate mouth, throat, and chest movements, I found it hard to stop thinking, 'That voice can't possibly be coming out of that body!'

Secondly, the music has been considerably reduced and re-arranged. This production cuts out most of the choruses, recitatives, and extended musical scenes (including the greater part of the Act I and Act II finales), and several songs are limited to a single verse. Some extra music (probably not by Lehár) has been added in places. The effect of these changes is to make the work much less operatic and emotionally intense. Given the need to fit television schedules and appeal to a mass audience, I suppose these revisions are to some extent understandable and forgivable.

What is quite unforgivable is the crass re-orchestration of the score. The credits (ha!) lead me to suppose that one Bert Grund carried out this musical crime. Some numbers are merely weakened by his efforts. Others are ruined by them. His preference was for busy violin descants, conspicuous woodwind twiddly-bits, syncopated brass, and the constant beat of soft brushes on side-drum. The comic duets for Bella and Pimpinelli suffer most of all, as Grund really lets himself go, overpowering the melodies with his elaborations. It is astonishing that the producers actually paid somebody to wreak such damage and shameful that the owners of the rights agreed (given how much Lehár prided himself on his orchestration). Presumably the idea in 1973 was to make the songs sound more 'with it' in contemporary 'easy-listening' style.

If you want to make yourself familiar with the plot of "Paganini" and some of its chief tunes, this version will serve. If you love the music of Lehár, however, you will probably not want to hear it more than once – which is a pity, given the quality of Theba, Stratas, and Koller.

"The Common Round" is an earnest, explicitly Christian short film, doubtless intended to provide its viewers with moral uplift. I imagine that the target audience was Sunday school teachers and their charges. Manners and morals have changed so much since 1936, however, that it is today almost impossible to watch it and keep a straight face. Even when it was first released, indeed, I doubt that general audiences would have appreciated it in the desired spirit.

The setting is a British colony in Africa. Martin is the pastor of a beleaguered medical mission in a plague zone far up country. Medicines are running out, nursing staff are dropping like flies, and the natives are getting restless (egged on by a sinister witch doctor). Several lines have a familiar ring: "No news of the relief party", "If only those drums would stop," "Death to the white man!", etc. Ironically, the depiction of Africans in this Christian production is even less sympathetic than might be expected from a commercial film of the era. They are all either pathetic or menacing. Even the plague is said to be their fault (for refusing to heed hygiene instructions). "We mustn't laugh at their ignorance," says Martin. "There's a lot of good in them really" - only we don't see it here.

The saintly, soft-spoken Martin is dreadfully priggish throughout. What sustains him is the recollection of moral homilies delivered by his old headmaster at prep school. The whole film is very much in the vein of Newbolt's poem "Vitai Lampada" ("But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, 'Play up! Play up! and play the game!'"). "Beyond the Fringe" was parodying this sort of thing fifty years ago, but "The Common Round" to modern eyes is almost beyond parody.

If you have any preconceptions about what a 1926 British film set in Northern Nigeria is going to be like, "Palaver" will probably conform to them. It never strays far from the conventions of Imperial fiction of the "Boy's Own Paper"/"Ripping Yarns" type. Only the prominence of the 'love interest' shows that it was intended for an adult audience.

A predictable 'love triangle' plot is combined with 'trouble on the frontier'. The three central characters are European. Jean Stuart, a nursing sister, finds herself caught between two men. Captain Peter Allison is a brave and upright young District Officer in the Colonial Service, who, we are told, has left behind the comforts of home in order to bring "White Man's justice" to Africa. Mark Fernandez is the brutal and cynical manager of a failing tin mine, who corrupts the locals with alcohol. Captain Allison knows his rival for what he is (a thoroughly bad sort), but Jean tries to see good in everyone and hopes to reform the villain with kindly exhortations to "play the game".

The Nigerians in the background are generally depicted as credulous, superstitious, and easily roused to violence. The film was made on location in Africa, and some outdoor scenes are in semi-documentary style. To modern eyes, the acting of the Africans is actually more acceptable (since more naturalistic) than the acting of the British professionals.

"Palaver" is by no means a badly made film for its day, and it does possess historical interest, if only on account of its plentiful stock of Imperial stereotypes. Captain Allison displays a sangfroid to match that of Sir Francis Drake on Plymouth Hoe (or Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond in "Carry On Up the Khyber"). What is his response to the news that the natives are revolting? "They will have to wait till I've finished shaving!"

But let me concede right away that this is a very personal review. "Secret Defense" has many of the characteristics that usually commend a film to me: it is well acted, it is slow, and it is French! Its milieu is the familiar one of the Parisian "haute bourgeoisie"; the smart city apartment and country château are a little hackneyed perhaps, but attractive all the same. The photography is good. The direction is painstaking. It promises to be an intelligent production.

To be honest, however, I found it very hard to sustain interest in it, and my mind soon wandered to the question of why it so utterly failed to engage me. I think it is because it is not at all concerned with character or personality. I can readily believe the suggestion made by previous reviewers that the film is modelled to some extent on ancient Greek drama. Sylvie, Paul, Walser, and Veronique are toys of the gods, not believable individuals. Their responses to events lack credibility. The central relationship between Sylvie and Walser never convinced me.

It might be argued that the people in "Secret Defense" are simply very cold-blooded. Yet they are hot-blooded enough when it comes to seeking revenge. The film also contains two of the absurdities often noticeable in more popular thrillers: the police simply do not exist in the world depicted, and the characters show no fear and little wariness even when dealing with people whom they suspect of murder.

If your preference is for character-driven drama and realism, you are unlikely to find "Secret Defense" a satisfying experience. And it lasts nearly three hours.

The central character in this film is Péter, a successful businessman who runs a cynical sort of dating agency called 'S.O.S. Love'. It might better be called a seduction agency. It offers continuous assistance by means of closed-circuit television, microphones, and mobile phones to rich inarticulate men in their 'romantic' approaches to women. There are three plot strands:-

1. Péter faces a commercial challenge from a rival agency called 'All You Need is Love'. Since his 'S.O.S. Love' helps men seduce women, while 'All You Need Is Love' helps women seduce men, it is very hard to see how they can be competitors. Coherence was not a priority for the makers of this film.

2. Péter, despite being a professional seducer by proxy, is himself an unattached widower or divorcé. His little daughter, Bogi, tries to set him up with every woman who strikes her as a desirable stepmother. This strand is played for cuteness.

3. 'S.O.S. Love' has a problem client called Tomi, an obnoxious idiot whose advances to Veronika have been rebuffed. Péter makes a special effort on his behalf by hiring a country mansion for the weekend. Tomi, pretending to be its owner, will invite Veronika to stay, and the staff of the agency will pose as his relatives in order to advance his suit in a variety of situations designed to make him appear attractive.

Despite all this contrivance, the anticipated farce never gets off the ground. Perhaps the funniest aspect of "S.O.S. Szerelem!" is the very crude 'product placement'. I really could not tell whether some of its clichéd romantic scenes (e.g., the slow-motion horse-riding) were meant to be parody or not. There is an intrusive musical score of pop-songs, several of them in English. To be fair, I am not part of the target audience for this film. It is aimed at Hungarians who enjoy Hollywood 'rom-coms' and would welcome their dose of slick sentimentality free of subtitles or dubbing for once. The plot does have a twist, yet the elaborate climactic sequence in the park makes no more sense than the underlying premise (for how does 'S.O.S. Love' know that Mr Kempelen is the man being targeted by 'All You Need Is Love'?).

"S.O.S. Szerelem!" was a box-office hit in its home country. People who wish to argue that post-communist eastern Europe has embraced the crassest forms of Western commercialism will doubtless find much to support their contention in this film. The most positive conclusion I can draw from it is this: Hungary has no need of witless American trash; it is plainly quite capable of producing its own.

This could be the ultimate epic film: an overwhelming sequence of extraordinary visual set-pieces on the grandest possible scale. Director Sergei Bondarchuk seizes every opportunity to deliver gargantuan spectacle with all the manpower and resources at the command of the Soviet state. His filming of the Battle of Austerlitz, the Battle of Borodino, the burning of Moscow, and the retreat from Moscow is patently a determined quest for the visually superlative, and it is a successful one. Even the depiction of such lesser events as a court ball and a wolf-hunt is lavish to an astonishing degree.

In the face of all this phenomenal effort, expense, and ingenuity, it seems downright ungrateful to say that my appetite for such brilliant grandeur was well and truly sated long before the end of the film. I started to notice that the acting and the music are sometimes rather less than superlative. More seriously, I felt the lack of narrative drive. Bondarchuk appears much more interested in the fate of armies and nations than in the fate of individuals. The great spectacles are what matter to him, and the human stories of "War and Peace" are merely fitted into the interstices. One never gets close enough to the characters. There is a lack of concern for story-telling, perhaps because this is an adaptation made by Russians for Russians, i.e., by and for people who already know the novel very well. Would anyone who has not read the book really be able to follow the film? I am doubtful. On the other hand, viewers who have read it are likely to miss access to the inner life of the characters. Of course, this is one of the unavoidable difficulties of filming any novel. Suffice it to say that Bondarchuk displays no particular skill in getting round it. Repeated use of short voice-overs to convey unspoken thoughts is not altogether effective. On a more technical note, the sound-recording fails to create a sense of intimacy. Often, regardless of whether the actor is seen to be near or far, the volume of his voice is just the same.

The central character of Pierre Bezukhov seems to me miscast. (The director, I learn, chose himself to play the role.) Unless I am remembering the novel wrongly, this Bezukhov appears too prim, too secretive, too calculating, and plainly too old. He frequently comes across as a disapproving bourgeois in the midst of aristocratic excess.

The problems of the viewer in following the narrative are increased by the casting-director's rather limited notions of what constitutes good looks. Among the men, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, Dolokhov, Kuraghin, and Prince Bagration are all of broadly the same physical type. The same may be said of the young women, Natasha, Soniya, and Mariya (not that the latter two receive much attention). As usual in historical films, some of the women have hair-styles and make-up more suggestive of the time in which the film was made and than the time in which it is set. Anachronistic music within the film is also occasionally distracting.

This massive patriotic prestige project is worth seeing. The battle-scenes are absolutely outstanding. Its ostentation, however, means that the personal stories of Bezukhov, the Bolkonskys, and the Rostovs are by no means as absorbing and affecting as they ought to be.

What a viewer makes of a film very much depends on the expectations that he or she brings to it. I had previously seen five other films directed by Claude Chabrol and considered all of them impressive. "Rien ne va plus" came as something of a disappointment. Though recognisably the work of the same director, it struck me as markedly inferior in terms of atmosphere and depth - which is not to say that it is a bad film by general standards. The quality of the acting is very high. Isabelle Huppert (Betty) is always extremely watchable, and Michel Serrault (Victor) is equally subtle. Their characters may not be the most credible of thieves, but the first part of the film, showing their practised hotel-based criminal double-act, is polished and amusing. After this, my enjoyment of the film steadily diminished. That none-too-original plot device, a briefcase full of banknotes, comes to the fore. (Criminal 'capers' have never much appealed to me.) When the action then moves to Guadeloupe, it turns into a run-of-the-mill gangster film (a genre that I like even less). I found myself waiting for the end - and, when it arrived, it might have come from Hollywood.

Viewers who do not view it with my preconceptions and aversions may certainly enjoy "Rien ne va plus". It is undoubtedly a well-made film. In future, though, when I recommend the works of Chabrol, while drawing attention to "Les biches", "Que le bete meure", and "Merci pour le chocolat", I may add the proviso: 'But I wouldn't bother with "Rien ne va plus". It's nothing very special in comparison'.

I generally hesitate to employ these two rather ill-defined words, but numerous moments in "Das Land des Lächelns" could serve as exemplary illustrations of the former, if by 'camp' is meant theatrical and exaggerated. The definition of kitsch is 'sentimental, pretentious, or vulgar tastelessness'. Viewers unsympathetic to operetta would likely apply it.

The 1974 film is a moderately faithful adaptation of the 1929 operetta, composed by Franz Lehár. Much of the camp and kitsch is right there in the original. I have mixed feelings about the late operettas of Lehár. For all their musical merit, they surely display the decadence of the genre. Vestiges of traditional operetta frivolity sit very awkwardly alongside (or underneath) effusions of almost morbid Romanticism. No longer content as an operetta composer, Lehár aspired to be the Puccini of the German-speaking world. Just how seriously should these works be taken? Are they comedies or tragedies? It is hard to say, and "Das Land des Lächelns" presents more problems than most, given the centrality of racial issues to its plot (the doomed love of an Asian man and a European woman in 1912).

The film adds a thick layer of 1970s kitsch to the 1920s kitsch. The adaptation from stage to screen is half-hearted. A straightforward recording of a stage performance might have been more successful. Here theatrical sets, choreography, and acting are subject to merciless close-up. Worst of all, the singers are clearly miming to a studio recording of their own voices. They sing excellently, it must be said, but the effect is alienating. So is the ill-advised casting of genuinely Asian supernumeraries alongside European principals pretending to be Asian. For no obvious reason, the film switches Prince Sou Chong's homeland from China to fictional Buratonga, apparently meant to be part of Indonesia or Malaysia (though the Asians in the cast are Korean!).

René Kollo, better known for Wagnerian roles, gives a dignified performance as the Prince (though without the inscrutable smile that justifies the title of the work). Dagmar Koller sings and dances energetically as his sister Mi, and she cannot really be blamed for having such an exceptionally unBuratongan face. Birgit Pitsch-Sarata is less satisfactory, her acting being limited to 'leading lady' clichés. What facial expression should a soprano assume while the tenor indulges in prolonged declarations of passionate love for her? Pitsch-Sarata opts for smug, and the result is hilarious.

"La Vie Parisienne" is an operetta famous for its lightness, gaiety, exuberance, effervescence, irresistible high spirits, etc. In my experience, indeed, English productions tend to overdo the 'Ooh-la-la!' element to the point of raucousness. This French staging errs in the opposite direction. It may be rated cool, staid, even austere by normal Offenbachian standards. According to a plot synopsis in "The Complete Book of Light Opera", at the end of "La Vie Parisienne" 'the curtain falls on a scene of rapturous hilarity'. Hardly in this case.

The recording was made at a performance in 1991 at the CDN Theatre, Lyon. The stage is very large and the chorus rather small. Ensembles consequently appear under-populated. The response of director, Alain Francon, to this problem is further to cut down the chorus presence and opt for a deliberately sparse look. It doesn't really work. The sets are fairly bare, generally grey or beige, and depressing in their emptiness, though period costumes add some colour.

The party scenes are particularly glum. In this production, unusually, the servants are not delighted to have the opportunity to dress up as society folk and eat, drink, and be merry (in order to help Gardefeu and Bobinet deceive Baron Gondremarck). Oh, no, they appear to regard the whole exercise as a tiresome imposition on themselves. The libretto may speak of joy and revelry; there is very little evidence of it onstage. The party-goers just stand around waiting for Gondremarck to drink himself under the table. In direct contradiction to the mood of the music, hedonism was never so joyless. Is the director trying to make a moral point? I honestly don't know, but, if he is, he has chosen the wrong show.

Helene Delavault (Metella) outshines the rest of the cast: she has considerable stage presence. As the two boulevardiers at the centre of the story, Jean-Francois Sivadier and Jacques Verzier fail to charm. The former looks permanently exasperated. Baron Gondremarck from Stockholm, the chief comic role, is played as a melancholy little man by Jean-Yves Chatelais (who, far from resembling a Swede, actually fits my notion of the stereotypical Frenchman). Frick, Urbain, and Pauline display some potential for humour, but the tone of the comedy is uneven. The Brazilian - a splendid cameo role in other productions - makes no impact at all. Most of the cast do not seem to be enjoying themselves enough to convey much joy to the audience.

This production is the full five-act version of "La Vie Parisienne", including a fourth act which is often cut. I fully approve of this from a musical standpoint: we get to hear the entire score. Given that the show never quite takes flight, however, viewers who are not confirmed enthusiasts for the music of Offenbach may well wish it were shorter. A performance of "La Vie Parisienne" that drags a bit? Yes, there must be something wrong.

This is a recording of a performance of "Simplicius" at the Zurich Opera House in 1999. Whatever reservations one may feel about it, its release is much to be welcomed. Johann Strauss is recognised to be one of the greatest operetta composers, yet the majority of his operettas have never been recorded. I was delighted to have a chance to make the acquaintance of one of the less well-known.

"Simplicius" (1887) resembles in many respects "Der Zigeunerbaron" (1885). Its score is of a similarly high standard (though without the Magyar colour). Most of the music is unlikely to be familiar even to Strauss enthusiasts however. That said, anyone who knows the "Donauweibchen" Waltz will recognise a number of melodies.

The unfamiliarity of the music means that attention tends to focus more on the plot and staging, and this "Simplicius" is an example of that rather unhappy modern sub-genre: opera-house operetta - i.e., operetta performed by people more accustomed to opera. The result is predictable. As a performance of the musical score, it is very proficient; as a staging of operetta, it is uncomfortable.

To draw a sharp dividing line between opera and operetta would be impossible, yet they are not the same. Operetta - even of the more substantial type - requires its own production-style. It is self-consciously artificial; it stands half-outside itself; it does not take its own plots seriously. To succeed on stage, therefore, operetta calls for comedy acting skills. Some opera singers possess these; most do not (and why should they?).

This fact is very much apparent here. Soprano Martina Jankova (Tilly) seems absolutely at home in operetta, captures the right tone, and is a pleasure to watch (as well as to hear). She comes from the Czech Republic, where the performance tradition of operetta may survive rather better than in western Europe. Piotr Beczala (Arnim), a tenor from Poland, also has the operetta touch. At the other extreme, Michael Volle could hardly appear more earnest if he were appearing in Wagner's "Götterdammerung". That said, he possibly gets away with it, as the hermit is a comparatively serious character. More problematic is the role of Melchior, the astrologer, which cries out for a comedian. Oliver Widmer tries his best, but it surely isn't his line. The title role in "Simplicius" is tricky: he is meant to be a young man who has been brought up in isolation from normal society (almost a 'feral child'). Martin Zysset conveys his childlike innocence but fails to realise that childlike mischief is also a component of the character. Many of the jokes in the dialogue pass unnoticed by the audience, as the actors fail to point them.

If casting is patchy, the staging is often downright off-putting. I deduce that one major difficulty about "Simplicius" - in the eyes of director David Pountney - was its light-hearted attitude to war. It is set in Moravia during the Thirty Years' War - a ghastly conflict - but its most catchy number is a jolly march whose words suggest that, if you haven't taken part in a cavalry charge, you've never lived. Arnim sings a song equally cheerful about exchanging his university studies for military service. Although other songs deride the notion that war is merry adventure, German-language operetta of the 1880s undeniably does include militaristic and nationalistic sentiment (and these are not all instantly given an ironic twist, as in the contemporary works of Gilbert and Sullivan). Pountney is very anxious to underline the fact that this sort of thing is not acceptable nowadays. Hence the chorus of soldiers is ragged and dirty. A troupe of Swedish dancing girls in Act III is replaced by a group of exhausted juvenile prisoners-of-war (though, incongruously, they sing the same comic ditty). At the end of Act II, when everyone proclaims 'God with us for Kaiser and Fatherland!', we are simultaneously confronted with the ugly face of war: a giant mask with flattened nose and bloody teeth. The principal feature of the set in Act III is a gibbet with a dozen rotting corpses.

The general trend of this production is thus to emphasise the gloomier aspects of the libretto. The opening scenes are so gloomy indeed that Simplicius' first waltz song sounds completely out of place. Like a perverse Mary Poppins, our director works on the assumption that opera-house audiences require a spoonful of medicine to help the sugar go down. The musical gaiety of operetta is only permissible in the opera-house, it seems, if balanced by some visual misery. The prevailing colours are grey and rust-red, and the lighting is subdued. Having purged the piece of much of its irresponsible lightness of heart, Pountney struggles to restore some vitality to it by injecting a dose of surrealism: enormous military boots are a feature. (The General stands in one throughout the second act). There is a good deal of fussy stage business with ropes and cylindrical platforms (the characters step from one to another). All of this extraneous embellishment is suggestive of a director without much faith in his material.

Indeed, Viktor Leon's libretto seems to be largely forgotten in the last quarter-hour, when the impetus of the plot (never very strong admittedly) is entirely dissipated. We have already had two numbers in succession without any dramatic relevance, but the director still sees fit to interpolate the entire "Donauweibchen" waltz: a number of seventeenth-century ladies and gentlemen dance about in a rain-storm and strip to their underwear (all underneath those rotting corpses).

The applause at the end is no more than polite. And no wonder. Fortunately, on repeated viewing, Strauss's splendid music comes to the fore, as the listener assimilates it. Lacking the genuine spirit of operetta in so many respects, this is indeed a production much better heard than seen.

It is with some slight trepidation that I submit a negative verdict on 'Un long dimanche de fiancailles'. So many members of the IMDb evidently adore it. Precisely for this reason, though, I am disposed to air a contrary opinion, if only to reassure anyone else who may see the film, dislike it, and visit this website, that he or she is not alone.

'Un long dimanche de fiancailles' has an intricate and potentially affecting storyline about the unswerving devotion of a young Frenchwoman (Mathilde) to her fiancé (Manech), believed killed in the First World War. It also has a very inventive, painstaking, and distinctive director. Unfortunately, subject-matter and directorial style are badly mismatched. To give credit where it is due, the battle sequences are powerful and shocking (and it is no bad thing for those of us who have never encountered war to be reminded just how fortunate we are). The film as a whole, however, sinks under a gratuitous load of quaint gimmicks, irrelevant whimsies, and distractingly unreal beauty. Mathilde appears to pass her entire life in warm, soft, golden sunlight of a kind that the rest of us only ever see during particularly spectacular sunsets. Every back-drop resembles a painting or, at least, a very superior picture postcard.Every scene is pepped-up by the introduction of some superfluous remarkable feature, be it a tuba, an artificial hand, or a lighthouse. And the less said the better about the lurid sub-plot concerning Tina Lombardi. Desperate attention-seeking is the hallmark of this film.

Now, highly-coloured hyperactive artificiality can work very well in comedy - it did in 'Amelie' indeed - but this story of war, suffering, and love called for restraint and the art that conceals art. To swamp it with pretty pictures and quirky detail is tasteless and ineffective. 'Un long dimanche de fiancailles' might be likened to a lily that has been not merely gilded but set with rhinestones, fixed to a turntable, and illuminated by flashing neon. I found it quite impossible to suspend disbelief and accept Mathilde and Manech as real people in genuine situations. I was continually reminded that I was watching the elaborate efforts of an ingenious film-maker striving - oh, so very hard! - to provide non-stop diversion and show off his own cleverness. The film failed to engage my emotions; its relentless flashiness bored me.

"For Better, For Worse" is a representative example of comfy cosy middle-class 1950s British cinema. Tony (Dirk Bogarde) and Ann (Susan Stephen) are an awfully nice young couple of newly-weds from upper middle-class families who find it expensive to set up home in the West End of London. They have to settle for a rented studio flat with furniture on hire purchase. Being much in love, Ann really doesn't mind living in a style decidedly more modest than that to which she is accustomed - but how does one host a proper dinner-party in such very trying circumstances?

There are various reasons for their finding themselves in this dilemma. Perhaps the most plausible is the housing shortage of the time. Then Tony, though educated at Charterhouse and Oxford, can find work only as a grade-three clerk on £5 10s per week. Strange this, given that the 1950s were not a time of especially high unemployment. Ann cannot take a job herself: "My fiancé thinks a woman's place is in the home". They are too proud to accept money from Mummy and Daddy, so they have to make do as best they can. "There are hundreds of us in the same boat," exclaims Tony. This nod in the direction of socio-economic criticism hardly convinces.

Genteel light comedy of this sort depends on its charm. Bogarde gives his usual proficient performance (on the lines of his Simon Sparrow in the 'Doctor' series). Susan Stephen seemed considerably less effective in the eyes of this viewer - not sufficiently appealing, to be frank - but what constitutes charm is always very subjective. Dennis Price and Peter Jones do their comic turns as an estate-agent and a second-hand car-dealer - rather like their roles in the later (and much funnier) "School for Scoundrels" - though even these apparently shady characters turn out be rather nice really. The working-class types (chief among them a charlady played by Thora Hird) are all predictably quaint.

British comedy films of the 1950s are commonly attacked as bland, complacent, shallow, and 'unduly bourgeois'. Often I would wish to rally to the defence. In the case of "For Better, For Worse", however, it would surely be far wiser not to give battle.

"29 Acacia Avenue" is a undemanding domestic comedy aimed at lower middle-class British audiences - the cinematic equivalent in its day of a popular three-act play ('Scene: A Drawing Room') performed at the local repertory theatre. Not only the subject-matter and handling but also the slightly stagey acting prompt this comparison. Alternatively, it might be viewed today as a forerunner of various cosy TV sitcoms concerning good-natured but anxious parents trying to cope with the emotional lives of grown-up children still living at home.

The father of the family and inevitable comic lead is Mr Robinson (played by Gordon Harker), a lugubrious bowler-hatted commuter who gets very upset by next-door's dog digging up his begonias. He and his wife feel compelled to keep up with the neighbours in respect of holiday plans, even though they would really prefer their traditional week at Bognor Regis to a Mediterranean cruise. 'I'm not so keen on these foreign parts,' admits Mr Robinson.

And can young Peter and Joan be trusted to behave themselves while Mum and Dad are away? Maybe not. Naive Peter (Jimmy Hanley) gets himself entangled with a seductive older woman, while Joan and her fiancé Michael fret at the frustrations of being engaged ('like driving a car with the accelerator and the brake on at once'). Even Shirley the maid (Megs Jenkins) wonders just how far she should go with her boyfriend Fred ('Have you ever known ecstasy, my girl?'). In 1945, all this contemplation of pre-marital sex must have seemed very daring. To modern eyes, of course, it is tame indeed.

The other standard comic component is class. The Robinsons are lower middle-class folk on their way up (on a par with the Gibbons family in 'This Happy Breed', made the previous year). The children are rather posher than their parents - Joan (Jill Evans) has obviously had plenty of elocution lessons! - but even they feel occasional unease when they get themselves attached to confidently upper middle-class partners. Fine wines, butlers, and family silver are outside their experience. The humour is gentle and thoroughly predictable, yet "29 Acacia Avenue" certainly offers some glimpses into English social attitudes of the 1940s (though the action takes place in a London suburb where World War II apparently never impinged).

"Third Time Lucky" is a rather predictable romance aimed primarily at women. It shows in extended flashback how Joan (Glynis Johns), a nice young lady from Finchley, comes to get incongruously mixed up with Soho gangsters and guns. A chance encounter with a debonair professional gambler called Lucky (Dermot Walsh) draws her into a glamorous and unfamiliar world of roulette, champagne, and Mayfair nightclubs. Eventually, of course, Lucky fails to merit his name - and then dear Joan finds herself in danger of going to the dogs (and I don't just mean the greyhound races).

This is a passable film on its own decidedly novellettish terms. It even features a recurring song in Ivor Novello style with the title "Forgive me for dreaming". There are melodramatic moments and the last half-hour may tax the patience.

"Are we really still in London?" Joan asks at one point. Well may she wonder. "Third Time Lucky" is less an evocation of post-war Britain than a modest attempt to replicate the high-life and low-life milieux of a certain type of American popular movie of that era. Import substitution to help the balance of the payments perhaps?

"Operation Cupid" is a simple-minded B-movie comedy that makes little effort to mask its all-round inferiority. Charlie Stevens, a hard-up Cockney wheeler-dealer, unwisely accepts a matrimonial agency as payment of a gambling debt. He discovers that the business is practically worthless, so, when Mrs Mountjoy, a wealthy widow, comes in search of a husband, he decides to pose as a South African millionaire in order to marry her himself. He is helped (or rather hindered) in this ruse by two dense side-kicks called Cecil and Mervyn. The film is padded out with scenes concerning Sylvie, Mrs Mountjoy's daughter, who dances in a leotard and sings a 'groovy' cha-cha-cha.

With its weak jokes, rudimentary plotting, and emphatically non-star cast, "Operation Cupid" could almost be a children's film - but I don't think it is. Charles Farrell in the central role comes across as a poor man's Sid James, while Harold Goodwin, as his witless helper, somehow even manages to suggest a poor man's Norman Wisdom. It's all quite inoffensive (except to viewers sensitive to insults to their intelligence). But what quirk of film-industry economics made "Operation Cupid" seem worthwhile to the people who made it?

"The Brass Monkey" is a low-budget comedy-thriller-cum-variety show of little artistic merit but maybe some slight curiosity value. It is most likely to appeal to viewers with a nostalgic interest in 1940s popular culture. It does have a story, concerning the efforts of Mr Ryder-Harris, a British convert to Buddhism, to recover three very precious and sacred brass figurines of the wise monkeys - hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil - originally made for a Japanese temple. With the involvement of a crooked art dealer and his underworld associates, the quest for the stolen third monkey turns nasty and a couple of people are shot dead. But viewers will probably care no more about the details of all this than the writers and performers appear to have done. It is not a compelling tale.

Made in England by an American director, "The Brass Monkey" is an uneasy transatlantic mish-mash in respect of both style and casting. The plot-line and production values resemble those of American murder-mystery potboilers of the time, such as the Charlie Chan and Falcon series. The leading lady, Carole Landis, performs in full Hollywood glamour mode in modest British settings (Southampton and London) with a supporting cast of British character actors and light comedians. The central figure of the film, however - I hesitate to call him 'the star' - is Carroll Levis, playing himself. This prompts the question: who was Carroll Levis? To anyone watching the film, it is unnecessary to point out that he certainly wasn't an actor. Levis presented a popular radio variety show and was - we are told - "Britain's favourite Canadian". Ah, such fleeting fame! He may be envisaged as a precursor of Hughie Green, compère of "Opportunity Knocks", the old British television talent contest. At his side is Avril Angers, trying hard to get laughs in the guise of a silly secretary. Her patter is a weak imitation of American 'wise-cracking'.

The last third of the film is largely turned over to a succession of variety acts performed on the Carroll Levis radio show. Terry Thomas makes-up as an elderly man to sing "Somebody blew my bluebird egg" in a Swiss-German accent. Avril Angers delivers an energetic comic number about the housing shortage. Mr Fred Cross from London gives a rendition on the musical saw of "Believe me if all those endearing young charms". Winnie from Halifax plays "The Flight of the Bumble Bee" on her piano accordion. Meanwhile, the police inspector swiftly winds up the unengaging mystery. Occasional bursts of portentous music add unintended humour to this awkward confection of light entertainment.

'Strictly Confidential' is a short, low-budget 1950s British comedy which does not aspire to sophistication. 'Major' McQuarry (William Kendall) and 'Commander' Binham-Ryley (Richard Murdoch) are a pair of would-be genteel confidence tricksters, recently released from prison. It is their good fortune to encounter Maxine Millard, an attractive young widow, who offers them work as joint managing directors of Grannies Globules Ltd, manufacturers of 'The perfect pills for stomach ills'. They are obviously unfit for their posts, but Maxine has her own devious financial motives for undermining the firm of which she is chairman.

Kendall and Murdoch are competent comic actors and their double-act just about keeps the film afloat. They wear bowler hats and carry umbrellas. The Major laces his speech with military jargon, the Commander laces his with naval jargon. They try to conceal the fact that they are penniless. William Hartnell, the 'Guest Star', acts as their principal foil.

Otherwise there is not much to be said. The plot is perfunctory and bears no relation to the realities of company law. The title has no particular relevance. Maya Koumani is (unintentionally) laughable as the villainess. In short, 'Strictly Confidential' comes across as a passable early television sitcom padded out to fill an hour.