Information
- BFI identifier39804
- Date1956-01-02 (Release)
- Production countryUnited Kingdom
- Production company
- SynopsisRomantic farce in post-war Vienna, based on Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus". (Synopsis)
- Work historyThe opening credits note that Michael Redgrave, Anneliese Rothenberger, and Anthony Quayle sing their own parts.
- Genre
- Subject
- CreditsDirector: Michael Powell
Director: Emeric Pressburger
Presents: Associated British Picture Corporation
view all - CastAnthony Quayle (General Orlofsky)
Anton Walbrook (Dr Falke (The Fledermaus))
Richard Marner (Colonel Lobotov)
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Title
Oh... Rosalinda!! (Original)
Die Fledermaus (Alternative)
EIDR identifier
10.5240/CF05-A866-DB96-A6E4-97C3-9Category
FictionThis work is included in the BFI Filmography.
This work is available to view in the Mediatheque at BFI Southbank.
- Collections
- Film / Video
- Scripts / DocumentsScript - Original story: Based on the operetta by Johann Strauss - SCR-13463
Ephemera: publicity - PBS-39804
Ephemera: publicity - PBM-39804
Oh... Rosalinda!! - Musical romance set in post-war Vienna, based on Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus". During the four-power occupation of post-war Vienna, Rosalinda and her husband become embroiled in complicated escapades and subterfuges when Dr Falke exacts his revenge after being the subject of one of their practical jokes. Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Production Company: Associated British Picture Corporation; Cinematography: Christopher Challis; Original operetta: Johann Strauss Jr Cast: Anton Walbrook (Dr Falke (The Fledermaus)); Anthony Quayle (General Orlofsky); Michael Redgrave (Colonel Eisenstein); Mel Ferrer (Captain Alfred Westerman); Ludmilla Tcherina (Rosalinda) Archers first film in Cinemascope [BFI Screenonline synopsis. ter several years pursuing projects apart and various false-starts, Powell and Pressburger returned to the cinema with an updated version of Johann Strauss's 1874 operetta Die Fledermaus ('The Bat'). Although emphatically re-titled Oh... Rosalinda!!, the main character remains the bohemian Dr Falke, lustrously played by Anton Walbrook in the confiding, audience-embracing style he had already essayed in La Ronde (France, 1950). Falke is a typical figure from Powell and Pressburger's oeuvre, a mysterious manipulator of events, a magician of sometimes unclear motives clearly inspired by Prospero in Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', which Powell tried unsuccessfully to film throughout his career. Akin to a director surrogate, the character has the same function as Colpeper in A Canterbury Tale (1944), Dr Reeves in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Lermontov in The Red Shoe (1948) and Mark's father (played by Powell himself) in Peeping Tom (1960). With an eye on the box-office, Bing Crosby, Maurice Chevalier and Orson Welles were initially sought for the roles of Alfred, Eisenstein and Orlovsky, but Powell finally settled for a pallid if loose-limbed Mel Ferrer as the American, while Michael Redgrave and Anthony Quayle actually acquit themselves splendidly as the French Colonel and Russian General, even doing their own singing. After four commercial disappointments in a row, Pressburger in particular apparently had high hopes for the prospects of Oh... Rosalinda!! Sadly, it was a gigantic flop, although recently it has attracted many new admirers, its influence quite apparent on Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost (1999): its direct-to-camera addresses, linguistically-challenged funny-foreigners, CinemaScope compositions, spoof newsreels, resolutely studio-bound filming and its climactic masked ball, in which men are tricked into liaisons by women in disguise, are all elements common to both films. By turns playful, impish and extravagant, Oh... Rosalinda!! is also intensely theatrical, the deliberately rarefied and artificial air emphasised by Hein Heckroth's set designs, which appear mostly in two dimensions, painted on flat surfaces without contour. Occasionally it also seems downright perverse: the flat-footed Redgrave spends more time dancing than ballerina Ludmilla Tcherina while, after the highlight that is Walbrook's fine and final speech against the Allied occupation, the film simply drifts away at the end, without Falke's concluding coda to the audience that conventional cinema symmetry would have normally demanded. Despite such questionable choices, Oh... Rosalinda!! retains an elusive and mysterious quality, a sense of hidden riches in the comic detail which repays further viewings. Sergio Angelini] Jympson Marman in the Evening News commented at the time of release 'Oh, Rosalinda!! is a gay, lovely affair as maddening as that bewitching creature of whom the poet wrote "With all her faults I Love her still". It is a Powell and Pressburger picture, which inevitably means excellence and exasperation at the same time' - MLP-1-1-64
Scripts & story development - MLP-1-1-64-1
Medium and small pressbooks held.
view all - Posters / DesignsPoster: film - Single sheet landscape poster printed by Leonard & Ripley Co. - PD-4503
Poster: film - Single sheet landscape poster printed by Leonard & Ripley Co. - SPD-7222863
view all - StillsPhotograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-q0v
Photograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-q0u
Photograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-q0t
Photograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-q0s
Photograph: print - Landscape - Black and White - bfi-00m-fde
view all - Articles
- +Oh... Rosalinda!!
Work - 39804 - 1956-01-02 (Release)
United Kingdom - Film - Fiction
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