First a Girl
The fashion salon employee Elizabeth dreams of a stage career, the small-part actor Victor of a bright future as a Shakespearean mime. Both dreams fail miserably at the artists' agency. Victor will have to continue to appear as a female impersonator. When Elizabeth loses her job and Victor his voice due to a cold, the young woman stands in for him. She puts on trousers and now plays a man as a woman playing a woman. Her performance becomes a huge success, which leads "Victoria" and her "manager" to stages all over Europe - until an English princess becomes suspicious in France and wants to find out the truth during a trip to the Riviera ... The British remake of Reinhold Schünzel's Viktor und Viktoria is a revue film with many dance and song numbers, in which the sexual confusion of the original takes a back seat to other show values: the glamorous locations on the Mediterranean, the elaborate stage sets, which the film architect O. F. Werndorff, and the extravagant creations of costume designer Joe Strassner, who had previously worked as a fashion designer on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm and as a couturier for Ufa.
details
-
Runtime
92 min -
Country
Great Britain -
Year of Presentation
2013 -
Year of Production
1935 -
Director
Victor Saville -
Cast
Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Anna Lee, Griffith Jones -
Production Company
-
Berlinale Section
Retrospective -
Berlinale Category
Biography Victor Saville
Born September 25, 1895 in Birmingham, England, UK, Victor 's first involvement with the film business was as manager of a small theater in Coventry. In 1936, Saville set up a company under his own name (Victor Saville Productions) with the noted screenwriter Ian Dalrymple as his partner. They made several features for Alexander Korda at Denham Studios, including South Riding (1938), often cited as Saville's best film. He then moved to Hollywood where he acted primarily as producer. He did direct one more A-grade film, Green Dolphin Street (1947), though the artistic failure of a miscast biblical epic, The Silver Chalice (1954), hastened Saville's eventual retirement from the industry.
Filmography Victor Saville
1927 The Arcadians | 1928 A Woman in the Night | 1929 Armistice | 1929 Woman to Woman | 1929 Me and the Boys | 1929 Kitty | 1930 The W Plan | 1930 A Warm Corner | 1931 The Office Girl | 1931 Michael and Mary | 1931 Hindle Wakes | 1931 The Sport of Kings | 1932 Faithful Hearts | 1932 Love on Wheels | 1933 Friday the Thirteenth | 1933 I Was a Spy | 1933 The Good Companions | 1934 Evergreen | 1934 Evensong | 1934 The Iron Duke | 1935 Me and Marlborough | 1935 Loves of a Dictator | 1936 It's Love Again | 1937 Action for Slander | 1937 Dark Journey | 1937 Storm in a Teacup | 1938 South Riding | 1940 The Earl of Chicago | 1943 Forever and a Day | 1945 Tonight and Every Night | 1946 The Green Years | 1947 If Winter Comes | 1947 Desire Me | 1947 Green Dolphin Street | 1949 Conspirator | 1950 The Miniver Story | 1950 Kim | 1951 Calling Bulldog Drummond | 1952 Affair in Monte Carlo | 1954 The Long Wait | 1954 The Silver Chalice | 1957 My Gun Is Quick