A Blonde Dream Film Review

Aka - Ein Blonder Traum

These Weimer musical comedies are all charmers. You would never think that within a year of this film Hitler would come to power as the German people slept. This stars perhaps three of the biggest actors of the period in light films and musicals - Willie Fritsch, Willi Forst and Lilian Harvey. Paul Martin was one of the top directors and also was romantically involved with the leading lady. Then there is the scriptwriter - a guy called Billy Wilder. Wilder had been writing for a newspaper but began working on scripts in 1929 and in the next few years wrote some well received ones. Then of course Hitler came along and Wilder first fled to France where he directed one film before going on to Hollywood.

Harvey left Germany for Fox in 1933 to make four films but when they were not successful, she returned to Germany. She refused to give up her Jewish and gay friends and was under the watch of the Gestapo. She finally left in 1939 and had to leave all her wealth behind. When she performed for French troops, she had her German citizenship taken away. That was the end of her film career, but she was quite successful on the stage. Both Forst and Fritsch remained in Germany but refused to have anything to do with the Nazi party. People had to make hard choices back then.

Interestingly, this plays into the plot of the film. Willy and Willi are window washers - and they and dozens of other window washers bicycle to work in the morning carrying their ladders with them as they sing. They are the best of friends though they often fight over women. Then while cleaning the windows at the American consulate, they witness Harvey trying to get a visa to America where she wants to star in Hollywood. She is a bit of a nutter though. Later Forst tells a Hollywood producer visiting Germany that if she goes, in four years she will be finished and forgotten. Which strangely was about the time Harvey was in Hollywood.

Both men fall for her of course - Harvey was sort of a Jean Arthur charmer - and they buy her a railroad car to live in - and both romance her. A number of songs though all but one are very low key - just breaking into a song without any glitz. In one fantasy number, Harvey dreams she has made it to Hollywood by train under the water and is auditioning with song and dance only to be thrown out. Some amusing bits though eventually the men's friendship falters because they want her to choose - and she really just wants to go to Hollywood. A nice resolution to this love triangle.