Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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Willy Forst of course is famous for looking back on the 'old Vienna' in a mixture of nostalgia and gentle irony in his films, but "Wiener Blut" may be the one which most highlights the question of what makes the 'true' Viennese style. We get a first answer right at the beginning, when Forst himself masqueraded as a medieval alchemist mixes the ingredients for the brew of this film, which are 'humour', 'frivolity', 'heart', 'history' and most of all, 'music'. And the film gets this mixture right. Willy Fritsch, who delivers his best post-Lilian performance as an initially stiff provincial Count who gets increasingly infatuated by Vienna, is dashing as usual (and 'pouting' a lot in his inimitable manner), Maria Holst as Melanie is as womanly as Doris Kreysler is charming, and there's a brilliant little part for Paul Henckels as Count Ypsheim. The show is stolen, however, by Theo Lingen and Hans Moser as the two valets, always rivals at the beginning, but then working together to sort out all the confusion in an almost Laurel & Hardy manner; the sequence in which the two of them try to stop the drunken Willy Fritsch from falling asleep is simply priceless. As is the deliverance of the title song by Holst and Kreysler in the central ball sequence, in which we also learn that a typical indication for having adapted to Vienna is "wenn man zappelt"

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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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Wiener Blut / Viennese Spirit (1942)

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