In this dazzling musical romance, a young woman (Renate Müller), unable to find work as a music hall singer, partners with a down-and-out thespian (Hermann Thimig) to revamp her act.
Pretending to be a man performing in drag, Victoria becomes the toast of the international stage. But she soon finds that her playful bending of genders enmeshes her personal and professional life in a tangle of unexpected complications.
Made just when Hitler was rising to power, Victor and Victoria is the kind of fun, decadent movie that is associated with the Weimer Republic of the 1920s and early 1930s (like Blue Angel).
Produced in the final days of the Weimar Republic, Victor and Victoria received limited exposure in the United States, and is today best known by Blake Edwards’s 1982 remake, the Oscar nominated musical, Victor.Victoria, starring his wife, Julie Andrews, and, of course, the ensuing 1995 Broadway production.
The movie’s gender politics is still intriguing and so is the melancholy romance.
Some critics compare the movie subtlety and nuanced tone with the best qualities of the early sly sex comedies of Ernst Lubitsch, and to a lesser extent Billy Wilder (“Sabrina,” Love in the Afternoon”)
Directed by Reinhold Schünzel
In German with English subtitles / Germany / 1933
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