The Congress Dances

Made contemporaneously with the storybook operettas of Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian, Congress Dances shares a similar blend of risqué comedy, playful camerawork, inventive sound, and of course, romantic ballads. The luminous Lilian Harvey stars as a shopkeeper who promotes her wares by ambushing world leaders with floral bouquets. When she performs this stunt just before a gathering of world leaders in Vienna, she is thrust into the political and romantic entanglements of the crowned heads of Europe. (Kino Lorber)