Paris Waltz

If Jacques Offenbach wasn't a funny old gentleman whose feet were "firmly fixed in the clouds," he probably should have been. Pierre Fresnay's screen portrayal of the nearsighted and bewhiskered French composer is delightful. He ambles blithely into a ladies' dressing room, offers a job to a status (Venus), and accidentally challenges a Russian general to a duel--all because he can't see, and doesn't much care to.

He captivates all Paris, though, with his operettas. Unhappily for Paris the source of Offenbach's inspiration becomes his leading actress, Hortense Schneider. And Hortense, a broad minded girls, finds emperors and generals as attractive as composers, and inspiration fails Offenbach. He then writes an operetta satirizing the vagaries of wandering Hortense; and the operetta, La Belle Helene, is a grand success. Offenbach is content. Hortense is content. Paris is content.

Paying less attention to historical fact than comic situation, writer-director Marcel Arnaud fills his screenplay with amusing scenes. In one of the funniest, Hortense bewilders her stage lover by singing the lines of her part to a boxful of royal admirers. As Hortense, Yvonne Printemps doesn't sing very well, which is unfortunate as she sings a lot. But she is properly capricious, and her dresses are by Dior. Though Pierre Dux makes a fine Russian general, the rest of the cast is just adequately funny. Only Fresnay makes a great deal of his part, but the movie needs no more. With lots of music and love (the latter more varied) Paris Waltz is a pleasant time.