Me and the empress

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Movie
Original title Me and the empress
Me and the Empress Logo 001.svg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1933
length 82 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Friedrich Hollaender
script Robert Liebmann ,
Walter Reisch
production Erich Pommer
for UFA
music Friedrich Hollaender,
Franz Wachsmann
camera Friedl Behn-Grund
cut Heinz G. Janson ,
René Métain
occupation

Ich und die Kaiserin is a German musical comedy by Friedrich Hollaender from 1933 . In addition to Lilian Harvey and Conrad Veidt, the main roles are cast with Mady Christians and Heinz Rühmann .

action

Juliette, the empress's hairdresser, on an excursion loses a garter that she had previously secretly taken from the empress's linen cupboard. The Marquis de Pontignac, who is currently hunting, finds the garter. During the search for the owner of the garter, the marquis moves away from his people. When his horse ran away, he fell and was seriously injured. The barracks guard who found him does not recognize him and so he ends up as a "civilian" with the medical officer, who only gives him a few hours to live.

Juliette has also arrived at the barracks in search of the garter, where she is mistaken for Marianne, the Marquis's first great love, for whom he had sent in his last wish. The Marquis also thinks Juliette is Marianne, as his eyes were blindfolded during the treatment by the doctor. Juliette sings him to sleep with a song, like Marianne always did, takes her garter belt and leaves. The song she sang was written for her by her friend Didier.

The Marquis recovered surprisingly for everyone and is now looking for the mysterious stranger after realizing that it could not have been Marianne. The only reference to them is the song, which nobody seems to know about. In the Empress's castle, he hears someone singing the song and hurries to the Empress's rooms. Juliette is sitting there, but the Marquis suspects the Empress herself as the singer and thus as the person who stood by him at his sick bed.

Entanglements and mix-ups arise: Didier suspects that Juliette was the mysterious woman at the Marquis' sick bed and now believes she is the person who is courted by the Marquis. He turns away from his fiancée, who is actually ignored by the Marquis. The Empress, on the other hand, cannot explain why the Marquis suddenly gives her special attention and forbids any approach. Only when Juliette explains to the empress who she is in the eyes of the marquis does everything dissolve. Juliette, not the Empress, appears at dinner with the Marquis. Shortly before, Didier sent the Marquis the sheet music for his song, which Didier had dedicated to Juliette in writing. Eventually Juliette and the Marquis become a couple, while Didier, through the Marquis's mediation, is about to pursue a career as a successful conductor .

Production and publication

I and the Empress came about from an idea by Felix Salten . Another working title of the film was next to the garter the Empress , the legacy of the marquise of S . The shooting took place from August 1932 to January 1933 in the Ufa studios in Neubabelsberg.

The film contains melodies from the comic operas The Beautiful Helena and The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein by Jacques Offenbach , who appears as a character in the film, as well as melodies by Charles Lecocq and Edmond Audran . Among other things, the titles are heard: How could I have lived without you (music: Hollaender, text: Robert Gilbert ), Lilians Harvey's song: I feel so millionaire today , the Empress’s song: But are we only entre nous .

The film premiered on February 22, 1933 in Berlin's Gloria Palast . In Austria it ran under the title The Empress's Garter , another title was Die Kaiserin und ich .

Me and the Empress was published by Koch Media GmbH on September 26, 2008 in the collection The best Heinz Rühmann films and on November 4, 2011 as part of the most beautiful romantic comedies with Heinz Rühmann . The film was also part of the “Great Film Classics” published by DeAgostini, where it appeared under the number 28 along with a 16-page booklet with detailed information about the film.

background

In the early 1930s, cinema audiences enjoyed a new film genre, the sound film operettas, which offered a welcome distraction from everyday life and economic hardship. Friedrich Hollaender, one of the most popular composers of early German talkies, made his first feature film, Ich und die Kaiserin , which was to remain his only one. His directorial debut brought Hollaender, who was "one of the most creative German artists," a great success and not only in Germany. Julius Falkenstein, who was cast in the role of Jacques Offenbach, “went hungry for a few days before shooting on the advice of the director in order to be even more like the ingenious 'father of the operetta'”. The actors Heinz Rühmann and Hubert von Meyerinck were highly praised for their performance in the film, but they only appeared in the German version.

However, when the National Socialists came to power, Hollaender's joy about the film's great success was limited. Fearing reprisals because of his Jewish origins, the artist and his family fled to Paris only a few days after the film premiered, and then emigrated to the USA. Less than four weeks later, Hollander's name was already on a prepared black list that was used to carry out an anti-Semitic "purge". It was also the last film he made for the film company for producer Erich Pommer, who was dismissed by the UFA in the course of Aryanization in 1933.

Other versions

In the Ufa studios in Berlin, a French and an English version of the musical mix-up was created at the same time. Charles Boyer played the male lead in both versions . Lilian Harvey embodied Juliette in all three languages, Mady Christians and Friedel Schuster were seen in both the German and English versions as Empress Eugénie and Arabella, respectively. In his memoir, Hollaender stated that working with Conrad Veidt was easier than working with the perfectionist Charles Boyer, who insisted that dialogues need to be rewritten. Heinz Rühmann also tinkered with his role as Didier, whereas Pierre Brasseur , who played the music notation in the French version, was uncomplicated. The most difficult thing, however, was the collaboration with Lilian Harvey, which absolutely did not want an end that stipulated that Juliette should be happy with Didier. A Harvey could skirmish with a young actor like Rühmann, but never marry him. She wanted the marquis. Although Hollaender was against it for reasons of reality, UFA director Ernst Hugo Correll decided in accordance with the UFA's star act.

French version: Moi et L'impératrice

  • Director: Friedrich Hollaender, assistant director: Paul Martin
  • Starring: Lilian Harvey, Charles Boyer, Pierre Brasseur, Daniele Brégis, Renée Devilder, Pierre Stéphen, Julien Carette , Michel Duran, Julius Falkenstein and others

English version: The Only Girl

  • Director: Friedrich Hollaender
  • Starring: Lilian Harvey, Mady Christians, Charles Boyer, Maurice Evans and others

Trivia

Empress Eugénie of France with her ladies-in-waiting

In the film, the painting “Empress Eugénie of France with her ladies-in-waiting” (1855) by Franz Xaver Winterhalter is recreated. Juliette interrupts the painter at work and straightens Eugenie de Montijo's hair with the words: "Otherwise the conversation lexicon says: 'The Empress had a bad hairdresser.'"

criticism

Critics at the time praised the film, which became a box-office hit, as “a short literary revue and an Offenbachiade through and through music, through and through rhythm”. It was also said that Hollander's work captivated “with its wealth of characters, revue variety and fairytale flair”.

The lexicon of international films described Ich und die Kaiserin as a “prominent, light-hearted, funny confusion [...], carefully arranged by the composers Friedrich Hollaender [...] and Franz Wachsmann. A few months after the premiere (Nazi newspapers immediately reprimanded the film as the 'end product of a liberal era that had been overcome') both emigrated to America ”.

The author and critic Karlheinz Wendtland spoke of a "caricature of the military riot". It is not the material that is important, "but the staging, which the actors and music use extremely effectively". Wendtland continued: “The beautiful senselessness of the plot and the deeper meaning of its parody - an excellent achievement; no wonder, the director is Friedrich Hollaender! "

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The garter belt of the Empress Wiener Illustrierter Film-Kurier No. 567
  2. a b c d e The great German film classics: Me and the Empress , number 28, DeAgostini, Atlas-Verlag, Chaseaux-Sur-Lausanne, Switzerland, editors: Holger Neuhaus, Joachim Seidel, De Agostini Deutschland GmbH, Hamburg, 2006, pp. 4-8, 13-15.
  3. The great German film classics: Me and the Empress von deAgostini
  4. Klaus Brüne (Ed.): Lexikon des Internationale Films, Vol. 4 . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 1729, ISBN 3-499-16322-5 .
  5. ^ Karlheinz Wendtland: Beloved Kintopp. All German feature films from 1929–1945 with numerous artist biographies born in 1933 and 1934, edited by the author Karlheinz Wendtland, Berlin, Chapter: Films 1933, Film No. 24.