What surprised me most about this film, since it's famously the inspiration for the 1982 Blake Edwards/Julie Andrews musical "Victor/Victoria," is that it's so CLEAN. The fact that its release date is 1933 may mean it was produced under Nazi censorship, or on the other hand it might be an example of how innocent and yet sophisticated filmmaking could be in Weimar Berlin. Notably, there's absolutely no homosexuality in it; the Robert Preston character (a wonderful piece of clowning by Hermann Thimig) is straight, and the James Garner guy (the incredibly sexy Anton Walbrook) suspects all along that Viktoria is really female, and his courtship of her consists of teasingly playing up to her pretensions of maleness while tweaking her feminine tendencies. The through-line of this version is the charming reactions of the skittish young Susanna-Viktoria (an endearing performance by Renate Mueller that's a poignant reminder that it's possible for actresses to be both beautiful AND skilled performers--a point usually lost on Hollywood) to the strange and excellent adventures of passing as a man, and then falling in love while trying to pass as a man with the man she loves.
Review of Victor and Victoria
