SPRING PARADE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 78, 20 December 1940, Page 16

SPRING PARADE

(Universal)

EFORE I saw this film, I had somehow got it into my head that Deanna Durbin was going to appear in a_ story about West Point "Military

Academy. It must have been something to do with the toy-soldier uniform one of her boy friends was wearing in an advertisement I noticed. Instead, it turned out to be a story about Old Vienna, which, at any rate, shares with West Point the distinction of being a place that every screen star seems destined to visit at least once in her career. Now it is Deanna’s turn to sing and frolic through the fairy city of the benign Emperor Franz Josef, whose sole preoccupation (if we are to believé countless films), was to take a fatherly interest in ambitious artists, struggling composers of waltz music,- and young lovers temporarily estranged. The only occasion I can remember when a more realistic view was taken of the Emperor and he was shown as a rather grim old tyrant, was in the French film "Mayerling"; but the weight of cinematic evidence is so strongly against this interpretation that it is obviously as false as that other heresy that the Blue Danube is not really blue but a muddy grey. "Spring Parade" will certainly shatter no cherished romantic illusions about the Old Vienna of 50 or 60 years ago (nor about Deanna Durbin either, for that matter). This is a city of gaiety, spring blossoms and song, inhabited by~a race of friendly, jovial Teutons, who dress up in pretty uniforms but never fight-ex-cept over the lovely girls who throng the streets and beer-gardens. It is surely a striking commentary on our conservatism that even two bitter wars against the Austrians have done nothing to shake the popularity of this legend about Old Vienna with British people. However, few among the crowds who see "Spring Parade" will worry much about this aspect. It is enough that Deanna Durbin, who continues to grow up gracefully, is seen here in a story as light as thistledown and that she is once again guided, with an unerring insight into popular taste, by her "discoverers," Joe Pasternak and Henry Koster. Miss Durbin (as from now on she has a claim to be called), has not yet quite got to the stage of being kissed in public (the director intervenes a convenient lamp-post on one occasion), but one is left with a very clear impression at the last that, thanks to the good offices of the benevolent Franz Josef, there will be wedding bells in Old Vienna for the little peasant girl from the village with an unspellable name, and her soldierlover who preferred to write waltzes. Between the village where the story starts and the court ballroom where it ends, there is an airy succession of flirtations, misunderstandings, lovers’ tiffs and reconciliations, interspersed by cheerful music, some of it composed in Hollywood for the occasion, and some of it of the genuine Old Viennese variety. It struck me that Miss Durbin is not singing as much as she did in her earlier films-

perhaps the intention is to put increasing stress on her talent as an actress-but I have no complaint of. the quality of her voice or of the music. One original number, "It’s Foolish, But It’s Fun," has all the earmarks of a "hit," and "The Blue Danube" is, for me, still the best waltz ever written. Of the supporting cast Robert Cummings is the soldier who preferred to be a composer, and I would have preferred it not to be Robert Cummings. Henry ‘Stephenson plays Franz Josef exactly as tradition dictates, and the physical resemblance is at least striking. It’s foolish, but it’s fun.