Review by Allan Fish
Ossi is the spoilt twentyish daughter of an American oyster magnate, who lives in ridiculous luxury in a giant mansion. She spends much of her day wrecking everything simply because she can, and her latest acts of destruction occur after hearing of another heiress getting married to a count. Her father simply arranges to have her marry a prince and contacts Seligson the matchmaker to arrange it. He finds one, Prince Nucki (great name), with tip-top appearance and spiraling debts, reduced to living in a one room slum apartment with his adjutant friend Josef. Nucki decides to send Josef in his place to find out about Ossi while he can go off on a drinking binge with fellow wastrels. Josef in his turn winds up getting married to Ossi in the prince’s name.
Remember that awful spoilt brat Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory whose every other word was “I want it” or “I want one”? Well, add another ten years to her, make her a little less thin, and change her father from a rich British nut-man to a rich American oyster-man and you have Ossi. Ossi is nonetheless far more amusing that Roald Dahl’s walking advert for child euthanasia, a character living in such a fantasy that it verges upon the surreal. She holds meetings with other women chanting “down with dipsomania!” and proceeds to toast it with a glass of wine, challenges her companions to boxing matches to fight over the right to ‘cure’ a wandering drunkard (who happens to be the real prince Nucki) and, best of all, keeps her prospective husband waiting while she goes through her ritual of being undressed, bathed, dried, massaged and dressed by an army of retainers large enough to rival that of an Middle-Eastern princess in the Arabian Nights. All so elaborate as to parody the lengthy decorous bathing scenes of Cecil B.de Mille across the pond, while keeping Ossi’s nudity strictly out of eyesight.
Topping all, however, is the extraordinary foxtrot dance scene in which guests, servants, one and all, are caught up in an endless dance marathon paced by a conductor with a serious case of the jumps, and with an orchestra with such original instruments as a man sawing through a plank of wood and a bald man having the side of his face slapped rhythmically to the music. With enough wit in the interiors to merit an essay in themselves and a script littered with juicy morsels (though Ossi murmuring “oh bollocks!” gets the biggest laugh). And then the performances, which are all pitch perfect; Liedtke’s drunk prince, Falkenstein’s creepy Josef, Janson’s hilariously pampered tycoon and, best of all, Oswalda’s Ossi. Favourite moment? It has to be a truly Lubitschian sight gag involving seven drunks in a line whittling down to one due to six strategically placed benches. It’s a scene that out-Chaplins Chaplin. And I bet Charlie loved it.
The marriage ceremony.
No comments:
Post a Comment