Reviews

Both my mother and grandmother were avid Novello fans - a great-aunt even made soft furnishings for his London flat above The Strand Theatre. Therefore all my life I have been totally prejudiced against his sickly-sweet tunes and dated 'Ruritanian' fantasies. However recently I was asked to lecture on Novello as part of a course for a charity and so came about my damascene moment. To get the same effect you have to imagine yourself in a Europe on the brink of war a mere twenty years after a previous conflict had decimated the youth of your country. Amidst all the dark swirling storm clouds you yearn for some relief and decide to escape for a couple of hours to a West End theatre. There you enter into an enchanted parallel world where romance, love, trust, honour and beauty are the norm. Yet this wouldn't matter if the work you were watching was of a poor or insincere quality. Novello provides the dream-scape and for a short while you become enchanted. This 1976 version is 'big' for a TV production but cannot compare with a full-fledged Broadway or Hollywood spectacular yet it has the ring of truth. The book is so well written and the music so adeptly suited to the mood of the moment that all seems artless and sincere. You start to care for the fate of Rudi,Grete and Maria and become fretful as the final scene plays out to its inevitable conclusion. Okay, I've wandered into a dreamy state with this review but so might you. Please grab any chance to see it, watch with cynicism excised and perhaps you too will fall under the Novello spell.

Many films of the mid-1930s offer light easy entertainment. In addition Princess Charming has more unusual attributes: a deliberate take on the Ruritanian plot lines of operetta is pointed out by intentionally placing instances of incongruous singing with dialogue that is usually spoken straight but is sometimes in a mixture of blank and rhyming verse. The then (1934) modern concept of background music in films is exposed, see the opening scene in the Prince's palace - is it diegetic or non-diegetic, and predates High Anxiety and other such more obvious spoofs by 40 odd years.

All in all an intelligent and well-worked little story that doesn't tax the attention but repays anyone digging it out. Buy a copy of the video (probably a 2nd hand one) and see if you agree it is worth nine out of ten.

It also has the peerless Max Miller - not a great screen performer but a this offers small memento of this unique Music Hall talent.

I purchased this film video on Amazon from a market trader as it was the only version of The Threepenny Opera available in English at the time. The quality looks like a typical fifties TV video, blurred and indistinct with poor contrast and definition. The colour also seems more like a 'colorized' version of a b&w print (perhaps my copy is!) not true 'technicolor'. Of the performances I agree with the previous reviewer it is cobbled together with Sammy Davis seemingly tacked on. Many of the songs are missing and the Englisj translation is not really as authentic as you might wish. It is better to go for the original German version from the 1930s (with its French equivalent on the other side of the disc). That gives you a quality b&w film beautifully restored with very good acting and singing. If a decent copy of this 1962 version, fully restored appears it might be worth obtaining as a reference point and a curiosity. Unless you want a curio save your money and wait for a decent English-language version to appear.