This is a rather surreal and offbeat musical.i don't think that i could give an exact synopsis and if i did it would seem rather strange.The film starts in a Ruritanian country where Danilo is a Captain of the guard who goes missing.He then fights a duel and has to escape the country.He passes through a gypsy camp where he meets up with Lupe Velez.He then goes to a tavern where he persuades the management to let him take over and invigorate the gypsy orchestra in lieu of payment for his drink.This he does and his playing and that of the orchestra are heard by an American impresario who decides to take them and the gypsy band to London.The impresario manages to persuade the manager of the Hotel west End to let them have rooms for free.However they are chucked out because of Lupes peculiar habits.however they are reinstated in their rooms due to the good deed of one of the group.The big show is a success and danilo goes back to his country as a hero and is made Lord Chamberlain.So try and make sense out of that lot!
2 Reviews
Exotic send-up
Igenlode Wordsmith26 February 2011
The plot of this film is so joyously inconsequential that one gets the impression someone decided that it simply couldn't be made with a straight face; at any rate, the resulting picture, ostensibly constructed to star Alfred Rode and his 'Tzigane Orchestra', emerges as an enjoyable send-up of the Ruritanian genre, the showbiz success musical, and just about every ethnic stereotype it touches, from the pompous Grand Duchess via the Teutonic beergarden and the hustling American impresario to the monocled English upper class. Characters are transferred from one scene to the next by cheerfully arbitrary plot developments that have clearly been shot for laughs; perhaps my favourite moment is the one early on in the film where the prisoners need to escape from their jail cell, after having been locked up with enormous and prolonged ceremony by the guard... so the door simply creaks open of its own accord!
Saddled with a leading man whose English and acting qualifications were both clearly limited, the script wisely transfers most of the speaking roles to Jerry Verno and Fred Duprez, respectively English and American comedians, who play up admirably. Meanwhile Lupe Velez provides exotic appeal and the requisite 'spitfire' and bathing scenes as the gypsy love interest. The showcase musical items are as exciting as they are billed, and the comedy as cheerfully ridiculous as the melodrama.
Like many long-lost films, on rediscovery this proves perhaps not to be the greatest picture in the world -- but in fact it's remarkably good fun.
Saddled with a leading man whose English and acting qualifications were both clearly limited, the script wisely transfers most of the speaking roles to Jerry Verno and Fred Duprez, respectively English and American comedians, who play up admirably. Meanwhile Lupe Velez provides exotic appeal and the requisite 'spitfire' and bathing scenes as the gypsy love interest. The showcase musical items are as exciting as they are billed, and the comedy as cheerfully ridiculous as the melodrama.
Like many long-lost films, on rediscovery this proves perhaps not to be the greatest picture in the world -- but in fact it's remarkably good fun.
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