The Gypsy Baron

It is axiomatic in musical comedy circles that the only people who can out-gemutlich the Alt Wienese are the Hungarians, what with their chardas and flaming Gypsy spirits. So it is of little surprise that The Gypsy Baron (pedigree: by Strauss, out of Vienna) should have Hungary as a background. The film is all the more gay for the shift, with wild music, impassioned dances and soulful violins. In short, it has what is known in the trade as schmaltz. And it is great.

The book is somwhat as puerile as are those of most musical comedies of the era and taste coming down to the present. But Anton Wolbrook carries off the part of an outlawed noble returned to his ancestral manor with the same dash he might have shown had he though it much mattered. Fortunately, it doesn't, because the foot-stomping music, broad comedy, handsome characters (with a few grotesque ones for conventional spice0 and universal high spirits mask the blankness of the plot. In all, there are few musicals with so much to recommend them and such a paucity of flaws.