Oh… Rosalinda!! *** (1955, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, Anton Walbrook, Dennis Price, Mel Ferrer, Ludmilla Tchérina) – Classic Movie Review 5,505

The 1955 British Technicolor film Oh… Rosalinda!! is an ambitious and imaginative if slightly fumbled and clumsy box-office flop musical from writer-producer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Their game plan is to update Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus to a musical tale of fun and games with Allied officers from the four occupying powers in post-war Vienna – the US, the UK, France and the USSR.

Michael Redgrave plays the French colonel Eisenstein, who flirts with his wife Rosalinda (Ludmilla Tchérina) at a masked ball. Anthony Quayle plays Russian General Orlovsky, Dennis Price plays British Major Frank and Mel Ferrer plays American Captain Alfred Westerman. They are all welcome players, but only Anton Walbrook Dr Falke, as Die Fledermaus (The Bat) who plays tricks on everybody, really has the style for these highly jinxed high jinks.

However, there are some who admire the romping extravagances and light-hearted inconsequentialities of this distinctly odd film, and it is easy to delight in the joys of Christopher Challis’s Technicolor CinemaScope cinematography and Hein Heckroth’s set designs. Even if it fails to recapture the success of The Red Shoes (1948), it is still worth a look. Powell and Pressburger have certainly succeeded in not just filming the operetta, but re-imagining it, taking it off the stage and making it totally filmic.

Future director John Schlesinger is one of the gentlemen. Also in the cast are Richard Marner, Olga Lowe, Jill Ireland, Anneliese Rothenberger, Oskar Sima, Nicholas Bruce, Arthur Mullard (the stereotype Cockney actor cast as a Russian guard), Roy Kinnear, Barbara Archer, Anna Steele, Betty Ash. and Dorothy Whitney.

Sari Barabas provides Rosalinda’s singing voice and Walter Berry that of Dr Falke, with Alexander Young singing as Captain Alfred and Dennis Dowling as Major. Frank. Johann Strauss’s music, played by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under conductor Alois Melichar, has new lyrics by Dennis Arundell. The film is scored by Frederick Lewis and it is choreographed by Alfred Rodrigues.

Oh… Rosalinda!! was shot at Elstree Studios, Boreham Wood, and on location in London.

Sadly, this was Powell and Pressburger’s fifth box-office flop movie in a row, taking only £95,833.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,505

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Ludmilla Tchérina as Rosalinda.