Viktor und Viktoria is a witty musical comedy of errors: The core idea is that a girl plays a man who plays a girl. Aspiring actress Susanne Lohr (Renate Müller) meets out of work actor Viktor Hempel (Hermann Thimig) while queueing at an agency. Viktor initially boasts about his success on stage, but Susanne pretty quickly sees through him, and from then on they develop a more honest friendship. When Viktor develops a sore throat and can't do his drag act at a vaudeville, Susanne steps in and becomes a huge, international sucess. Complications ensue... 'Viktor und Viktoria' is perfectly charming. It gives us a glimpse of how German cinema might have developed if it had not been taken over by the Nazis - a process that began in the year when this film came out. No wonder it proved influential over decades, inspiring several remakes (none of which I have had a chance to see so far). The plot is fast paced and the gender bending issue is handled with a lot of charm. Dialogues are mostly sung; amazingly, this sounds perfectly natural after a few minutes. Acting is excellent; Müller and Thimig have great comic timing. So have the other actors, of whom Adolf Wohlbrück deserves special praise (he changed his name to Anton Walbrook a little later and emigrated to Britain, where he had a great career). Still, for me the discovery of this film was Renate Müller, whom I had not seen or heard of before. She is simply fantastic as 'Mr Viktoria'. I read up on her and found that while the Nazis courted her for her looks, she refused to seperate from her Jewish boyfriend and to appear in propaganda films. In 1937, she died under suspicious circumstances, falling from an upper floor window soon after the Gestapo had entered the building. I don't know why she did not leave the country like Walbrook did - perhaps she did not trust her English, perhaps she had family in Germany. If she had emigrated, I am sure today she would be as well-known as Marlene Dietrich.
