NAPOLEON IS THE ONE TO BLAME

This film, made five years into Hitler's reign as Germany's chancellor, is a frothy comedy that would be considered an amusing, albeit insubstantial chestnut/time-passer, except for the context in which it first came into being. A mere precis of what it --- Napoleon ist an allem schuld --- is and what it's about only sounds slightly odd at first: okay, this is a semi-screwball comedy of sub-Lubitsch pedigree about an English lord who's obsessed with Napoleon; studies and gets into an amorous kerfuffle with a showgirl whilst visiting Paris for a Napoleon hobbyist's conference. In the midst of this kerfuffle, he takes the advice of an imaginary Napoleon, who's also played by the fellow who plays the English lord. The English lord's wife turns the strategic tables on her husband by pretending not only to be not bothered by the possible scandal of what's going on, but also ... well, suffice it to say that the wife's name is Josephine and that Waterloo is invoked.