OH . . . ROSALINDA!! (1956)

Off the screen for four years, the return of The Archers, writer/producer Emeric Pressburger - director/producer Michael Powell, in this stillborn operetta adaptation only showed how much the tide had turned against their kind of filmmaking.  (Even with a final success on their next, PURSUIT OF THE GRAF SPEE/’56, The Archers were no longer ‘untouchable.’*)  Pressburger’s original idea was a great one: Modern day DIE FLEDERMAUS, Johann Strauss’s ultra-Viennese operetta (social/sexual roundelay with poet, peasant & prince types getting their wires crossed at a fancy Russian ball), hopscotching across the borders of the Four Allied Powers (France, Russia, Britain, USA) in charge of a divided post-WWII Vienna in Powell’s CinemaScope debut.*  Alas, the initial impetus the only good idea Pressburger had.  The script a mess of stalled dialogue, uneven cast (but TALL, all leading men over 6 foot!), and the format of operetta (where numbers largely comment on rather than move the plot) inimical to cinematic attention spans.  (Note how the plot-heavy concerted finale sees the film finally come to life.)  Yet in spite of its shortcomings, what utter delight comes in every shot.  The use of color & stylized artificiality in the sets (lenser Christopher Challis in TechiColor) with watercolor backgrounds & perspective via trompe l’oeil, hand-in-hand with eccentric staging and that Strauss score.  (Though why drop the countess’s Czárdás?)  Easy to see how the film didn’t get a Stateside release till the ‘90s!  But, Oh, Rosalinda, what a loss for the senses.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *And the Archers knew they missed.  Note the credits with the famous Archers’ logo (Target and Arrow) doesn’t get the bull’s eye shot signifying success, but has arrows all over the place, none dead center.  A self-confessed miss.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Powell did have a Scope test-run filming a WideScreen two-reel ballet version of THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE/’55.  (Not with the famous Dukas score.)  Hideous, poorly composed, unable to get the story across without incessant voice-over narration.  He certainly learned fast!