Spring Parade

One of the few Deanna Durbin films, almost all shot in black-and-white, not available on commercial video as of this writing. That's a shame. Universal needs to finally release this film as well Deanna Durbin's HERS TO HOLD, the final chapter in her THREE SMART GIRLS trilogy. SPRING PARADE is a charming and delightfully dated fairy tale-like film and makes a great companion to classics such as Danny Kaye's HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON, Shirley Temple's HEIDI as well as Sonje Henie's series of films.

Deanna Durbin is a Hungarian peasant. Through the usual mx-ups common to musical comedies, she finds herself in Vienna and in love with Robert Cummings. When S. Z. Sakall, the baker whom she is staying with, is arrested for something Miss Durbin has done, she goes to see the Emperor, played by Henry Stephenson.

Producer Joseph Pasternak and director Henry Koster complete the trio of Hungarians involved in this Viennese operetta movie, with Franz Joseph portrayed as the benevolent deus ex machina he was so often shown as in this sort of fluff. In truth, he was an arch-conservative, his tyranny tempered by a sprawling and confusing welter of nationalities. Despite that anhistorical nonsense, this is a funny and charming bit of fluff. Miss Durbin was Universal's biggest star, and this movie was given full production values, with lots of talented performers, like Mischa Auer, Walter Catlett, Anne Gwynne, Allyn Joslyn, Reginald Denny, and Franklin Pangborn. The songs are not from the top drawer, but Miss Durbin surely knows how to sell them.

I purchased a VHS copy from Movies Unlimited that was in new condition. The tape however had some flaws, possibly related to the source material. It looked like there was a few seconds missing between a couple of reel changes and a dropout possibly due to missing material or a bad master. It's difficult to tell. The footage/sound was also distorted at times for some of the songs, which could be due to my tracking on my VCR. I had to set the tracking manually to get the best picture and my VCR won't go to auto track once a manual setting is set. My parents have a cheaper VCR and played the tape with auto tracking. The tape had a bit of fuzz near the bottom of it but the audio may have been a little better with worse video. The transfer was produced by some small company with "Hollywood" in their name. It was better than not having access to the title. Of course I wished for better footage.

As far as the theme and subject of the movie, this movie is almost in the same vein as the original Good Fairy, in that the actress in both films is playing a country girl with little experience going to the big city. This in a sense is a type of variation in the Good Fairy theme with different typical Deanna Durbin musical twists. If your a fan of Deanna Durbin films you'll find this has all the typical things that happen in one of her musicals. When there's a problem, she'll usually end up singing her way out of them. In this case there are a few minor plot differences and twists that aren't in a typical Deana film, yet enough of the same types of things that a fan will feel at home in watching this movie. This movie might rate as one of the top 5 or 6 of her films. And I give it a high rating, SK "skuddles" is in a typical role as well. I think other criticisms of this film are to harse. I think this is a fine light Deanna Durbin film with enough quality to make it rate highly in a film you should watch if your a fan of her movies. The only problem is the transfer and copy that's available. I own a nonlinear editing system and wonder about the chance of finding a 16mm copy of this and maybe actually making an attempt at a transfer and edit into the other copy giving me a better master for my own home use. I almost feel like going after this as a personal restoration project, but I'm afraid there isn't decent source material to be found and think that the one out there is probably/unfortunately the best source available.

These kinds of things happen. Of course you have to rate this within a mindset of when it was produced and the type of movie it is. This is from a different era and to a large extent based on themes in Deanna's other copy of "The Good Fairy" movie theme, mixed in with a little bit of "the shop around the corner". It's a good theme mix. In some ways it's almost a perfect composite of other Deanna and other classic films, because it has so much other little things put in. Having so many little things in it, makes the film appear and actually looser in it's script, it's not as tight a script, but it can't be because it's more of a mix of other film themes all thrown in together. But even with it's loose plot it fits together pretty well.

I've put in my opinion without putting in enough to create a spoiler. I think it's worth watching and owning. If it came out from a good copy of 35mm inter-positive, wow I'd be really happy. I don't know if I can find better audio from her "audio" CD recordings that might be edited into a working dub, but I'm tempted to look.

Why do I watch these films. Well I put them together for my mom mostly. She likes light musicals with good singing and many of Deana Durbin films fit that bill very well. This film rates up there just below her best films in my opinion. There are 21 of her films out there. Many can only be had if you buy the PAL UK version of the DVD collection and do your own conversion to NTSC using a DVD player that can play Europeon PAL and trans-code it back to the USA standard. Some of the PAL titles have distorted sound as well, probably because the loss of decent film source copies of the movies. Truly a tragedy. Thank God for folks like Keno who try to restore and offer rare films before they are completely gone.

Also one more correction. Deanna Durbin films being Black and White are not "rare", all of her films were "black and white" except one. This is due to her high popularity and the studio had to cut corners to afford to have her in the film, so they cut by not shooting in color for all of her films, except one.

If your looking for an awesome older musical with charm, check out some of her movies. Totally family friendly with some great film moments in many of them.

Deanna Durbin signs her heart out here as the Hungarian peasant "Ilonka". She's been told by a fortune teller that happiness is looming - and she reckons that might just have come true when she encounters "Harry" (Robert Cummings) - a drummer in the Imperial army. Meantime, though, he is fond of writing music, a skill prohibited in the military so she determines to somehow get his works in front of the Emperor (Henry Stephenson). Creatively, she takes to hiding them in the salt sticks that her boss the baker (S. Z. Sakall) makes daily for the court. That's quite a risky tactic as those who surround the throne worry that this could be a plot to poison their ruler and so the baker finds himself incarcerated, and "Ilonka" has to make a tough - and brave - decision. It's quite a charming mix of musical and romance this, with a bit of chemistry between Durbin and Cummings and with the scene-stealing Sakall and Stephenson also on good form guiding this gently evolving storyline towards it's inevitable and pleasing conclusion. "Waltzing on the Clouds" has the germ of an ear-worm to it - you might find yourself humming it long after the film has ended!

It's a crying shame the studio never released this on video...I have seen this movie and it is easily one of Deanna's best! Durbin comes off with even more of her famous spunk and "atitude" that we all know and love. Her supporting cast is first rate and the songs really add color and warmth to the picture. Set in Vienna Austria,this is the only movie where the storyline is contained fully outside of the USA. It happens to be Deanna's shortest film but it is not lacking in the entertainment department as it will have you chuckling constantly especially the beginning of the movie where Deanna's character Ilonka tries to sell her goat!