The Great Waltz

United States

1938

104 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 2.9/5 Stars.
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DIR Julien Duvivier, Victor Fleming, Josef von Sternberg

SCR Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter Reisch, Gottfried Reinhardt, Vicki Baum

CAST Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravey, Miliza Korjus, Hugh Herbert, Lionel Atwill, Curt Bois, Leonid Kinskey, Al Shean, Minna Gombell, George Houston, Bert Roach, Greta Meyer, Herman Bing, Alma Kruger, Henry Hull, Sig Ruman, Christian Rub

Duvivier made his Hollywood debut with this opulent MGM musical about the romantic early years of composer Johann Strauss, written by the émigrés Gottfried Reinhardt and Samuel Hoffenstein and gorgeously photographed by the Oscar-winning Joseph Ruttenberg. Attempting to capture the lilting rhythms and charms of Strauss’s waltzes and operas (set here to lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and performed by the Viennese-born soprano diva Miliza Korjus), Duvivier moved from lavish set piece to lavish set piece, in the café, the garden, the palace, and the opera house—leading one critic to call the film “a symphony in soft focus”—before Josef von Sternberg stepped in to direct the wonderfully kitschy final sequence, the carriage ride through the Vienna Woods during which Strauss was inspired by birdsong to write The Blue Danube. Called by its admirers “The Great Schmaltz,” The Great Waltz is said to have been a favorite of Stalin’s. —BAM/PFA

Director

Julien Duvivier

Born in Lille in 1896, Julien Duvivier was a stage actor and then production assistant on André Antoine’s films before starting as a director in 1919. His prolific career – over 60 films – only ended on his death in 1967. After twenty or so silent movies inspired from many different sources, he attained international recognition in the 1930′s with movies which have become classics of “poetic realism”, notably the sound remake of Poil de carotte (1932), La Belle équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937).

After exile in Hollywood during the war, he returned to France in 1946 but failed to regain his former critical standing, despite such remarkable films as Panique (1947), Voici le temps des assassins (1956) and Pot Bouille (1957). He enjoyed international succes with The Little World of Don Camillo (1951). —Octuor de France

Victor Fleming

Victor Fleming entered motion pictures as a combination driver and stunt man at the Flying A studio in Santa Barbara, California, in 1912, following a series of jobs that included bicycle mechanic, taxi driver, auto mechanic (He also did a little racing on the side), chauffeur and auto salesman. Allan Dwan took credit for hiring him after he repaired Dwan’s car, but Fleming’s real conduit was his actor pal Marshall Neilan, whom he had met as a chauffeur.

After two years with Flying A, Fleming joined Neilan at Kalem, making the early Ham and Bud comedies, and in 1915, he joined the Douglas Fairbanks unit at Triangle, where he worked under Dwan and John Emerson. His first picture there was The Habit of Happiness, and he was one of several cameramen who worked on D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in 1916. By the outbreak of World War I, Fleming was Fairbanks’ supervisory cameraman at ArtCraft Pictures. After Signal Corps service that included serving as President Woodrow Wilson’s personal… read more

Victor Fleming entered motion pictures as a combination driver and stunt man at the Flying A studio in Santa Barbara, California, in 1912, following a series of jobs that included bicycle mechanic, taxi driver, auto mechanic (He also did a little racing on the side), chauffeur and auto salesman. Allan Dwan took credit for hiring him after he repaired Dwan’s car, but Fleming’s real conduit was his actor pal Marshall Neilan, whom he had met as a chauffeur.

After two years with Flying A, Fleming joined Neilan at Kalem, making the early Ham and Bud comedies, and in 1915, he joined the Douglas Fairbanks unit at Triangle, where he worked under Dwan and John Emerson. His first picture there was The Habit of Happiness, and he was one of several cameramen who worked on D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in 1916. By the outbreak of World War I, Fleming was Fairbanks’ supervisory cameraman at ArtCraft Pictures. After Signal Corps service that included serving as President Woodrow Wilson’s personal cameraman at the Versailles Peace Conference, Fleming rejoined Fairbanks at the newly formed United Artists, where in 1919, he directed his first picture, When the Clouds Roll By.

Later at Paramount, Fleming’s first major success was Lord Jim (1925). The following year, he brought Clara Bow to fame in Mantrap, filmed the now-lost Spanish-American War epic The Rough Riders, and in 1927 he was Emil Jannings’ first American director with The Way of All Flesh. Fleming’s first all-sound film, The Virginian, established Gary Cooper’s laconic character.

At MGM, Fleming vaulted Clark Gable to stardom with Red Dust (1932) and began a string of fast-paced hits with Bombshell (1933), Treasure Island (1934), Captains Courageous (1937) and Test Pilot (1938). He also remade a large portion of The Great Waltz (1938) after the studio fired original director Julien Duvivier.

Fleming took over The Wizard of Oz from Richard Thorpe in October 1938, but before he finished that picture, was asked to take over David Selznick’s troubled production of Gone With the Wind from George Cukor.

In the following decade, all but Fleming’s last picture, Joan of Arc (1948) were box office successes, particularly A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne, one of MGM’s top grossers for 1944. At the time of his death in January 1949, Fleming was planning to film The Robe, later made at 20th Century Fox in 1952. —IMDb

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Josef von Sternberg

Born in Vienna, director Joseph von Sternberg spent much of his youth in New York; his entrée into show business was as a film repairer for the World Film Company of Fort Lee, NJ. After returning to Austria to complete his education, he joined the U.S. Signal Corps as a photographer in 1917, then took assistant director jobs after the end of World War I. It was either actor Elliot Dexter or an anonymous producer who suggested that Sternberg would go farther in the industry if he affixed a “von” to his last name, à la Erich von Stroheim. Von Sternberg went whole hog in creating a “genius” veneer, adopting a strutting, imperious attitude, dressing in regulation beret and puttees, and even growing an obnoxious little mustache so he would be certain to be hated and feared. This posturing tended to obscure his genuine cinematic gifts, especially in the field of photographic lighting and composition (at one point, he was the only director permitted to carry an American Society of Cinematographers… read more

Born in Vienna, director Joseph von Sternberg spent much of his youth in New York; his entrée into show business was as a film repairer for the World Film Company of Fort Lee, NJ. After returning to Austria to complete his education, he joined the U.S. Signal Corps as a photographer in 1917, then took assistant director jobs after the end of World War I. It was either actor Elliot Dexter or an anonymous producer who suggested that Sternberg would go farther in the industry if he affixed a “von” to his last name, à la Erich von Stroheim. Von Sternberg went whole hog in creating a “genius” veneer, adopting a strutting, imperious attitude, dressing in regulation beret and puttees, and even growing an obnoxious little mustache so he would be certain to be hated and feared. This posturing tended to obscure his genuine cinematic gifts, especially in the field of photographic lighting and composition (at one point, he was the only director permitted to carry an American Society of Cinematographers union card). After a few false starts, von Sternberg directed the independently produced The Salvation Hunters (1925), a somewhat ham-handed exercise in symbolism that received wide distribution after it was praised by Charlie Chaplin. When the film began losing money, Chaplin backed away from his praise, claiming he’d championed the film just to see how much clout his recommendation would have; be that as it may, von Sternberg’s next assignment was the Chaplin-produced Woman of the Sea (1926), which for reasons that remain obscure was never released.

In 1927, von Sternberg moved to Paramount, where he directed the misty, moody gangster drama Underworld. Much to Paramount’s surprise, the film was a huge hit, proving that von Sternberg could combine artistry and expressionism with bankability. The director made several more atmospheric crime dramas for Paramount, the best of which was Docks of New York (1928); he also directed the still-powerful The Last Command (1927), which told the semi-true story of a once-proud Russian military officer who after the Revolution was reduced to a Hollywood extra. Though brilliant photographically, von Sternberg’s films were somewhat wanting in story values (some of his plot lines were flat-out illogical), but audiences overwhelmed by their visual excellence didn’t seem to mind. Only when talking pictures arrived did von Sternberg’s shortcomings as a storyteller become obvious. By this time, however, von Sternberg was riding high on the strength of his German-made The Blue Angel (1929), which made a star out of Marlene Dietrich. For the next six years, the Dietrich/von Sternberg combination (which many insiders likened to Svengali/Trilby) proved a winning ticket, resulting in such delectable slices of exotica as Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932). But who, wondered Hollywood, was truly responsible for the popularity of these films, von Sternberg or Dietrich? Since Dietrich went on to star just as successfully for other directors, the consensus was that von Sternberg was not so brilliant after all, and that many of his camera innovations of the 1920s had descended into mere trickery by the 1930s.

British film critic John Grierson summed up the industry’s attitude toward von Sternberg in 1932 when he wrote, “When a director dies, he becomes a photographer.” While this opinion seems insufferably snobbish (and uninformed) today, the fact remains that directors were held in much higher esteem than mere photographers in the early 1930s. Dropped by Paramount, von Sternberg still managed to find work, especially among such admirers as Peter Lorre, who requested that the director helm Lorre’s 1935 version of Crime and Punishment. In 1937, von Sternberg headed to London to direct producer Alexander Korda’s I Claudius, which thanks to a series of unforeseen and devastating disasters was never completed. Some observers unfairly held von Sternberg responsible for this debacle, and as a result his days as an A-list director were over. Except for a few scattered highlights like 1942’s The Shanghai Gesture, the rest of von Sternberg’s Hollywood output was disheartening, and he found himself more often than not replaced by other directors in mid-production. During World War II, von Sternberg made an interesting non-theatrical film titled The Town for the Office of War Information; he also taught at U.S.C. and handled some of the second-unit work on Selznick’s Duel in the Sun (1946). His last Hollywood work, for RKO mogul Howard Hughes, was distinguished only by its banality. Von Sternberg’s final film, produced in Japan, was the bizarre AnaTaHan (1953), which reflected the director’s lifelong fascination in all things Oriental. Though inactive professionally for the last 13 years of his life, von Sternberg lived in wealthy retirement, occasionally emerging to be honored at international film festivals. Among his many industry awards were the Eastman House Medal of Honor and an honorary membership in Berlin’s Academy der Kunste. Joseph von Sternberg was the author of several books, including his perversely inaccurate autobiography Fun in a Chinese Laundry (1965); ever the control freak, von Sternberg would seldom let one of his books be published unless he had personally selected the type font and designed the dust jacket.

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