The Sunday Waltz: Waltzes from Vienna (1934)

The French poster for Waltzes from Vienna (1934)

Alfred Hitchcock was dismissive of Waltzes from Vienna (1934).  I don't agree.  His position may be understandable as the film's release was the last film of a director who was about to become internationally famous with the next film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1935).  Waltzes is a superior film to the three films that preceded--and may be, technically speaking, the best produced and looking film until The 39 Steps.  Only four years in to using sound, Hitchcock (there with the first British sound film Blackmail) has survived the rough learning curve.  Vienna's overall technical prowess demonstrates that form is ready to match content.  While of the previous films. Murder and Rich and Strange stand out as fascinating early Hitchcock, they are steps back from the visually adventurous and professional silent period.  Sound in its first years on both sides of the Atlantic tended to nail the camera down, as movement tended to complicate the entire recording process.  By the end of 1934, the sound limitations have been shed, and we see a Hitchcock film that returns to the visual charm of his silent period.  


If the string of iconoclastic Hitchcock films had not exploded after Waltzes, we may have been talking today about the British Jean Renoir.  There are infelicities in the film.  Hitchcock's lack of apparent interest in father/son stories is obvious.  Perhaps his own father's death when Hitchcock was 13 left him trying to tell a story that he had little experience with, or maybe in art father/son stories have a hard time below the truly epic in size.  The Christian central mythology and Wagner's Ring come immediately to mind, but (at least in modern cinema) the mother and her whacked relationship with son/daughter dominates.  Our close ties to the Greeks in the hew and shape of the modern world may be the cause of this or just the luck of the draw when it comes to who dominates the varied artistic scenes.


And as to Hitchcock's overall displeasure, I suspect that is the showman using his dismissive sleight of hand to keep attention on the solid HITCHCOCK films that follow.  He would use again Edmund Gwenn (more recognizable to most cinema fans as the miraculous Kris Kringle from the original Miracle on 34th St made a decade or so later in the U.S.) in The Trouble with Harry.


Waltzes from Vienna (1935)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
black & white, sound mix: mono, aspect ratio: 1.37:1 Spherical, running time: 80 minutes
production studios: Gaumont British Picture Corporation Limited & Tom Arnold Films Limited
also known as:
Strauss' Great Waltz (1934) - USA
Le Chant du Danube (1934) - France

Produced by Thomas Charles Arnold
Written by Guy Bolton - original play, Alma Reville, A M Willner
Photographed by Glen MacWilliams
Edited by Mme H Wurtzer
Music by Louis Levy - musical director

Cast:  Esmond Knight - Johann Strauss - the Younger, Jessie Matthews - Rasi
Edmund Gwenn - Johann Strauss - the Elder, Fay Compton - Countess Helga von Stahl, Frank Vosper - Prince Gustav, Robert Hale - Ebezeder,Marcus Barron - Drexter
Charles Heslop - Valet, Betty Huntley-Wright - Lady's Maid, Sybil Grove - Madame Fouchett