“VIENNESE NIGHTS."

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 193, 15 August 1931, Page 12

“VIENNESE NIGHTS."

“ Let Us Be Gay ” will be screened at Everybody's Theatre for the last time to-night. Vienna, gay Vienna, in the glorious days of the monarchy, when young and old danced and drank, sang and made love—New York in the sparkling ’9o’s Vienna once more in 193 U, with some of its former gaiety left, but with all those who had once been gay grown old or dead. These are the scenes of Oscar Hammerstein’s and Sigmund Romberg’s new operetta, “Viennese Nights,” which will begin on Monday at Everybody’s Theatre. When those two, in turn composer, librettist, and producer, left the stage to work for the screen their powers were enormously enlarged. The leading roles are in. the capable hands of Vivienne Segal and Alexander Gray. The wonderful cafe scenes of ” Viennese Nights,” with their masses of swaying colour and splendid choruses. prove this beyond doubt. These' cafe scenes, that take up more than half the picture, are probably the most excellent of their kind ever photographed—the control of the crowds, the blending of the colours and, above and behind all, the background of music with its true, happy Viennese spirit, are superb. They have, as all successful operettas must have, a certain fairylike quality—they are divorced from common life so that the characters may sing their way through the beautiful melodies without foolishness, and yet they reflect life in the very wsyy that the fairy-tales reflect it. The picture is done in technicolour — and most successfully—but it would be nothing without its music. The beautiful themes of Otto’s symphony run throughout, side by side with the melodies of old Vienna, and never in any scenes is music very far away, interpreting and reflecting the moods of the characters and the beauty of the setnfhose who saw " The Student Prince ” either as a play or as a picture, will And in “Viennese Nights” something that “ The Student Prince ” lacked—a greater beauty, a finer story, and a more perfect presentation. Box plans are at The Bristol.