Reviews

This is the best film adaption of this classical operetta I have seen so far. Very recently a digitally colored and cleaned version of this movie has been released. I was stunned to see such an old movie played with such an outstanding technical quality.

Already before he made this movie Willi Forst was the "Bel Ami" of the UFA era. Through this film, which is clearly one of his very best, we can see him, as he was seen during his most successful time. The movie is dominated by Theo Mackeben's immortal song "Du hast Glück bei den Frauen, Bel Ami" performed by Lizzi Waldmüller.

The Austrian goverment, always short of money, tries to sell the Austrian customs to a consortium of Swiss banks. Unfortunately on the Austrian-Swiss border there is the customs officer Laurenz Hasenhuettl, played by the unforgettable Hans Moser, who confuses the envoy of the Swiss banks with a wanted criminal. He creates such a chaos that finally the Austrian goverment collapses. This is one of the very few Hans Moser films, which besides excellent performance of Moser is also based on a good story.

Knox owns half of the Circus Saran and acts as a clown there. He hides his circus life from his daughter and is very embarrassed when his daughter found out his true profession. This is a mediocre commedy at best. Hans Moser, who plays Knox, performs poorly, because the character he plays is simply not funny. Leo Slezak, who owns the other half of the circus, as well as Pat and Patachon perform better. The only really good thing of this film is its music composed by Robert Stolz, especially the song "Ein bisschen Sing-Sang und gute Kameradschaft" , which is all over movie.

This is one of the worst remakes I have ever seen. One can´t blame Christiane Hörbiger for that. But the director Peter Weck adjusts the old story, which took place immediately after WWII and was centered around the Mariandl song, to the current time and melts it with Hans Moser famous song "Ich hab im Herzen drin ein Stückerl altes Wien", which doesn´t fit at all.

Schwejk is a czech soldier in the old Austro-Hungarian army. His extraordinarily stupid behavior drives his commanders nuts. In this movie Peter Alexander plays the Schwejk role and shows what great talent as a comedian he was.

This is one of the very early tourist films which became fashionable after world war II. Hans Moser plays an old judge, who hated women throughout his live until he finally became enslaved by the charm of a young women. That brings him in all kind of troubles culminating in a duel. Great performance by Hans Moser especially as a duellist. Without him this movie should be quickly forgotten as all these foolish tourist films.

Geza von Bolvary was a great master in melting music with film and "Schrammeln" is clearly his master piece. The Schrammeln did exist in the 19th century and were a Vienna folk music quartet. The movie starts as a comedy, almost as a Hans Moser movie, who plays a minor role as a member of this quartet. Johann Schrammel (played by Paul Hörbiger), the leader of the quartet, wants to compose and play "serious" music rather than folk music until Fiaker Milli, a strong women played by Marte Harell, finally convinced him that folk music is the right music for him. But then the movie becomes a love tragedy, because both he and his much younger and better looking brother Josef (played by Hans Holt) fell in love with Fiaker Milli. To reconcile the estranged quartet Fiaker Milli sacrificed her deep love to the younger Josef Schrammeln and married a millionar instead. When the movie turns into a tragedy, also the music changes and the beautiful song "Man ist einmal nur verliebt" becomes the tragic melody of the film.