Tanz mit dem Kaiser

This melodrama from the reign of Maria Theresa is a pure delight. While we see the future successor Joseph II becoming an enlightened but in his private life almost impractical monarch, Rittmeister von Kleber, played by Wolf Albach-Retty, uses his identity to seduce Christine von Alvin, played with energy by Marika Rökk. An innocent lie becomes a problem when Christine is invited to court and Maria Theresa would like to see her as her future daughter-in-law. What a surprise it was when Christine looked into the face of the real Joseph II for the first time! It's not an easy situation, but it wouldn't be a Jacoby/Rökk film if they didn't turn it into something ethereal. The rococo fairy tale was the perfect fabric for the love games against the backdrop of the minuet. I am delighted and, as usual, appreciate the irony of fate, which, in producing a wartime Reich film, has managed to bring the Austrian people back together again through the lens of then and now. (04/03/2013)