Brackett and Wilder earned a lot of kudos with The Lost Weekend which they blew on this expensive flop. It must've seemed like a sure thing - colour, romance, Bing Crosby, Wilder making an "entertainment" as opposed to something gritty, but it didn't work out that way. I'm not sure audiences were as interested in Hollywood versions of puffy Austrian romances as Austrian expats in Hollywood were in making them. (Though when they were Americanised it was a different story).
Bing is a gramophone salesman in old time Vienna, 1901 who falls for aristocrat Joan Fontaine. The Emperor Franz Josef gets involved.
The colour is lovely, the sets slightly over the top (this seemed to be a post war thing in a few Hollywood films).
Some of this is really fun - the stuff with the dogs, Freud analysing a dog, Fontaine's shifty dad. Needed more of that. You could get a whole film out of Freud.
Neither Crosby or Fontaine seem entirely at home. It's not bad. Just clearly cost too much money. Didn't need to.
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