The Waltz Dream

The Waltz Dream

1925. Germany. Directed by Ludwig Berger. With Willy Fritsch, Mady Christians, Xenia Desni. A major hit upon its release, Berger’s The Waltz Dream is a forerunner to the popular Viennese operetta films of the 1930s. Austrian actress Mady Christians stars alongside German matinee idol Willy Fritsch in this adaptation of the Oscar Straus operetta about a Prince who, after falling for a Viennese girl, becomes obsessed with the city and its customs. Fritsch later starred in the last two silent films of Viennese-born director Fritz Lang—Spione (Spies, 1928) and Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929)—and then became a mainstay of operetta films, forming an enduring on-screen partnership with the English actress Lillian Harvey. Together Christians and Berger formed the short-lived company “Länder-Film” before fleeing Germany in the early 1930s. Christians settled in the United States, where she continued to act—including a part in Max Ophuls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)—while Berger directed films in Hollywood, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain for Austro-Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda’s London Films before returning to Germany after the end of World War II. In German; English subtitles. 80 min.