Viennese Girls (digital quality)

This film is among Forst's most perfect. Forst never even comes close to sugar bakery, while making an extremely beautiful and sensual film, nevertheless. As usual, the director simply gets everything right in a seemingly effortless manner, creating wonderful 'musical' pacing, and Jan Stallich's cinematography and the magnificent costumes and sets do the rest. And it's fascinating how in the grand finale, basically dialogue-free, all the tensions are resolved by Ziehrer's music alone, and everyone - including the American band - breaks into an entranced whirl of song and dance to the film's title song. Gorgeous pastel colors in shots which often remind of paintings. Rarely does Agfacolor look more glorious.

But the script and the performances deserve similar praise. Forst plays the composer in an endearingly modest way: Ziehrer is not a glamorous hero, but an insecure and timid young man who more often than not has to rely on his friend Engerl to make his progress. Engerl is played by Hans Moser, who gives one of the best performances of his entire career here; caring and heartfelt, a complete character much more than in most of his other films (don't worry, he still gets a lot of chances to do his famous ranting and his mumbling is even worse than usual, but that's what creates the charm, of course). And one can easily understand why the two ladies, especially the stunning Judith Holzmeister, make such an impression on the Forst character....

It also appears that Willi Forst had “borrowed” some story lines from “Wen Die Goetter Lieben”.