Why would someone who loathes operettas, waltz music, and schmaltz watch the 1937 MGM musical/biopic "The Great Waltz"? The two-word answer is "historical curiosity." It might almost as easily have been "Luise Rainer." My primary interest was in this great German-Jewish stage actress who was the first person to win back-to-back Oscars (The Great Ziegfeld, The Good Earth in 1936 and 1937), appeared in "The Great Waltz" and some more obscure 1938 films, made one war movie in 1942, and reappeared on screen in 1997--at the Oscar 70th anniversary presentations and in the Hungarian film of Dosteovesky's "The Gambler" (for which she received outstanding notices). That she was married to playwright Clifford Odets (Golden Boy, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Knife) increased my interest in Rainer.
I was also interested in the first English-language film by director Julien Duvier, whose legendary "Pépé le Moko" is in limited release now (see my review). The leading man, Fernand Gravet, returned to France and continue to make movies (some in English) until his death in 1970.
Even with such company, it was the other female lead, the Polish/Ukrainian opera soprano Miliza Korjus, who had the oddest Hollywood career of all. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal as Carla Donner, the leading lady of Johan Strauss operettas. It was supposed to be the first picture of a ten-year contract made by Irving Thalberg, Despite her Oscar nomination and the film's commercial success, it was her only Hollywood film, though she died in Culver City in 1980.
So "The Great Waltz" is a must-see for those interested in strange Hollywood careers. And those who like Strauss waltzes and/or operettas and don't mind very loose history/biography enjoy it. For me, the music was insufferable. I was totally underwehelmed by Miliza Korjus's singing voice.
The most famous sequence in the movie is, I think, too kitschy for Walt Disney of that era. In it, amidst a revolutionary uprising in Vienna in 1848, the only road the carriage with Johan Strauss and Carla Donner in it can take is through the Vienna woods. They fall asleep, and Strauss wakes up to various birds singing--you guessed it: "Tales of the Vienna Woods."
The gurgling Danube River inspiring "The Blue Danube Waltz" is not blatantly absurd, but the "Tales of the Vienna Woods" inspiration scene is a serious contender for the dumbest inspiration scene in any movie biopic.
Along with Johan Strauss composing, conducting, and staging operettas there are two main plots: one about the commercial success of Strauss waltzes, engineered in part by Carla's championing and in part by music publisher Julius Hofbauer (Hugh Herbert) giving the unknown bank-clerk-turned-composer a lucrative contract to write music. I don't know if there is any historical warrant for this, but it is not as unbelievable as the Viennese woods birds.
And there is the romantic triangle. Rainer already won one Academy Award for playing a cheated-on wife putting up a shining-eyed brave front (in "The Great Ziegfeld"). She was really, really good at what the Chinese call "eating bitterness" and breaking audience hearts in sympathy with her self-sacrifice.
Knowing the Production Code of the time, there is no real suspense about marriage prevailing in the end, though it's something of a surprise that there is a 50-year leap to the Emperor Franz-Josef forgiving Strauss for youthful brashness.
In addition to the oddities of Hollywood careers of the principals, something else that intrigues me about a movie ending with a huge crowd in Vienna and shoveling nostalgia for the Vienna of the waltz craze is that it was released in 1938, the year in which Austria was annexed to the Third Reich and Hitler made a triumphant return and rant to a gigantic crowd s in Vienna. I'm sure that the movie was conceived before, and probably made before that, but I really wonder what 1938 Anglophone audiences thought of the movie in general and the scene of the cheering crowd in particular.
The Louis B. Mayer and his minions annoyed Rainer to such an extent that she left town is a loss to movie-lovers. It's harder to tell about Miliza Korjus. She must have been a better singer than she sounds here (in that she was admired by Joan Sutherland) and had some acting ability. Hollywood also wasted the talents of director Duvivier (and of so many others...)
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