Oh... Rosalinda!! in Sensurround

[Moraldo Rubini]

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing Powell/Pressburger's rarely screened version of Johann Strauß' Die Fledermaus at Palo Alto's Stanford Theatre. Reborn as Oh... Rosalinda!!, the setting has been updated from Vienna's belle epoque to a post-WW II Vienna which is occupied and under control of the allies -- a revolving door of handsome personnel from Britain, France, Russia and the U.S. -- all enamored of Rosalinda.

Like Powell's other foray into opera -- Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffman -- its strength is also its weakness: its visual impact is so dazzling as to nearly obliterate the sometimes blurry plot. Cineaste John Kobal once wrote, "people can be wearied by an excess of splendid, ravishing, opulently beautiful sights and sounds that leave one no space to reflect on what has been going on and to catch one's breath". I didn't tire of the spectacle though. I'm afraid I'm akin to a crow, for I have an admittedly shallow attraction to these sparkly things: von Sternberg, Fellini, and Cate Blanchett's recent filmic Elizabeth.

The time change was interesting to me though. The operetta is a nostalgic paeon to Vienna's golden age, when champagne was king and masked balls were the playground of nobility. Powell's Vienna rebuilding, is desperately trying to recreate the days of old. The trouser-role of Prince Orlovsky has become General Orlovsky, a Russian authority played with mercurial accent by a youthful Anthony Quayle. Lip synching poorly was Mel Ferrer as the adoring Alfred. Reminiscent of Lucille Ball in DuBarry Was a Lady, sometimes he possessed the glorious voice of the English tenor Alexander Young and other times he lent his own modest tones. Lipsynching beautifully was the great dancer Ludmilla Tchérina as Rosalinda. Her legendary grace imbued an additional dimension to the glamorous wife of Michael Redgrave's French Colonel Eisenstein. Tchérina was voiced by the Bavarian soprano Sari Barabas, who also started her career in dance until a serious accident ruined her terpsichorean future. I imagine, due to time constraints and to give Oh... Rosalinda!! more the feeling of a musical than an opera, there were many cuts to the original score. My biggest misgiving was that Rosalinda's "Czardas" was cut, as it would've been swell to hear Barabas' rendition of this showpiece. Of interest to opera fans: Anton Walbrook's Falke was voiced by the legendary Austrian baritone Walter Berry. Who am I forgetting? Ah yes, one of the few real singers in the cast was the charming Anneliese Rothenberger as the mischevious maid Adele.

All of this was seen from the panoramic viewpoint of CinemaScope. The colors explode on the screen. It sometimes looks like Chagall's stained glass come to life. The sets are surreal, filled with trompe l'oeil flats and skewed perspectives. Hein Heckroth designed the sets in a manner reminiscent of his more famous Red Shoes. These sets provided a backdrop to some jaw-dropping gowns for the ladies. Goldenrod silk chemises wrapped into diaphanous sheaths; pink champagne chiffon bubbled up to become a subtly trained ballgown with assymetrical hem -- this movie is a fashion show of 1955 aesthetics. Even the men were ablaze in finery: elaborately tailored military uniforms; robes of dark, masculine flannels which opened to show magenta satin linings; sapphire blue silk pajamas. It's as much a kaleidoscope as it is a movie.

In the middle of all this, the nearby city of San Jose decided to slip a bit. An earthquake struck about half way into the movie. We first heard the rumbling, then the theatre started rocking. I held on to the seat in front of me, as my movie companion cut off the circulation in my right arm with his "death grip". The projection room had floors of Jell-O and the movie was bouncing on the screen before us. I looked up at the chandalier above us to see if there was potential for a Phantom of the Opera reinactment. When everything settled down, I asked my pal if he thought we should head back to the City to see if everything was alright. But there was no budging him from this movie! He loved it.

This was high camp. Mel Ferrer's attempts to become Rosalinda's "Svengali", comically drawing the negligee'd beauty into his chambers. Rosalinda's appearance at the ball in an azure-feathered strapless ball gown that really showed off her incredible figure, inspired the audience to gasp (an awed fellow behind me uttered a simple "Wow!"). A french farce of mixed identities and slamming boudoir doors.

[Jezebel38]

I was so stoked when this film was recently placed on schedule at The Stanford. I had hopes one day of being able to see this rare Powell & Pressburger film, and now here it was being presented on the big screen in all its Technicolor Cinema-scope extravagance. Just to view this astonishing print, provided by the BFI, was worth the price of admission. I have never seen a film with such eye popping, saturated colors and, like Moraldo, I found “its visual impact so dazzling as to obliterate the sometimes blurry plot.” It helps greatly to be already familiar with Die Fledermaus going into this film because the updating of the story to Vienna circa 1955 while the city is still occupied by the Four Powers, only complicates the plot.

Michael Redgrave (Eisenstein) is a French officer, Ludmilla Tcherina (Rosalinda) his wife, Mel Ferrer (Alfred) an American officer, Dennis Price (Warden Frank) an English officer, Anthony Quayle (Orlovsky) a Russian general, and Anton Walbrook (Falke) a Viennese black-marketer. All of the voices here are lip synched, at times somewhat poorly, with the exception of Redgrave and Quayle. Michael Redgrave’s lyric tenor is kind of thin, but Anthony Quayle displayed a fine baritone voice in Orlovsky’s aria “Chacun a son gout”. The score was trimmed a bit, as Moraldo states - in the ballroom scene, Rosalinda (incognito) is introduced as a Russian countess, rather than Hungarian as in the operetta, so I figured they would drop the “Czardas” – maybe that would have been one nationality too many, at this point.

There was also quite a bit of visual humor on display in the film, my favorite bit when Eisenstein gets introduced to General Orlovsky. The General is at his desk downing one shot of vodka after another, when in the foreground a soviet clerk sits over a drafting table with a map of the world and a pot of red paint, painting in the soviet occupied countries. The clerk then dips his brush in the paint and we see his hand hover over the coastline of the US and Canada, before retreating back to the soviet block.

Although this film is a lesser P&P effort, and has never been considered successful, I did enjoy it more than I was expecting to.