Ernst Verebes Movies

Ez a Villa Elado (Villa For Sale) was another feather in the cap of talented Hungarian screenwriter Laszlo Vadnai, who'd previously scored a major success with Fairy Tale Auto. This time around, hero and heroine nearly come to blows when both wish to purchase the same villa. The protagonists work out an amusing arrangement, which of course eventually blossoms into romance. The film was supposed to have been a vehicle for popular comic actor Julius Gozon, who is surprisingly humorous here. Though drubbed by the critics, Ez a Villa Elado was a hit with Hungarian movie fans. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Franciska "Francy" Gall was still delightfully in her "gamine" mode when she starred in Kleine Mutti (Little Mommy). The star plays a schoolgirl who runs into nothing but trouble when she finds an abandoned baby on the steps of an orphanage. Almost immediately, Gaal is presumed to be the mother of the child, which earns her instant dismissal from her school. Penniless, she takes a room in a fancy hotel, intending to beat the bill at the end of the week, giving her enough time to find a proper home for the baby. The hotel doctor, assuming Gaal is rich, chastises the girl for her "selfishness" in failing to care for the infant herself and forces her to leave with the kid in tow. Forced to take a job selling vacuum cleaners, our heroine runs into more problems at the home of a rich banker, who huffily assumes that she is his son's mistress?and on it goes until the happy ending, which comes as much of a relief to Gaal as to the audience. Kleine Mutti was directed by Herman Kosterlitz, who as "Henry Koster" directed several Deanna Durbin pictures in the late 1930s-early 1940s (many of which owed a great deal to Kosterlitz' earlier Francy Gaal vehicles). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Viktoria (Friedl Schuster) is the wife of the American Ambassador of Peking. The Hussar (Michael Bohnen) is a Hungarian military officer, and Viktoria's former sweetheart. Captured by the Russians, the hero escapes to Peking, where he is given shelter by Viktoria. Their love is soon rekindled, whereupon Viktoria divorces her incredibly understanding husband and accompanies her Hussar to Vienna. This hackneyed storyline was not what attracted German audiences to this lavish operetta: Rather, it was the rich singing voice of Friedl Schuster, whose enthusiastic performance helps keep the soggier plot developments afloat. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Anny Ahlers stars as the notorious 18th-century courtesan Madame Pompadour, here "Germanized" as the Marquise von Pompadour. Once she's presented at the Court of Versailles, Pompadour twists French King Louis XV (Kurt Gerron) around her little finger, all the while setting fashion standards for the aristocracy. She compromises her status with the King when she falls in love with Gaston de Meville (Walter Jankuhn), the mischievous composer of anti-royalist poems. The typically Germanic emphasis on the corruption and debauchery of the French nobility tends to weigh down the sparkling musical score. Conversely, the stagey direction of Dr. Willi Wolf actually adds to the film's charm. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Oscar Karlweis enacts the title role in the German operetta Der Tanzhusar (The Dancing Hussar). The hero is a none-too-bright military man who wriggles in and out of one scrape after another. He also pitches woo in the general direction of the film's two leading ladies, Friedl Haerlin and Gretl Theimer. Ernst Verebes and Oscar Sims provide comic relief, though they're not quite as funny as the corpulent Karlweis' efforts to portray The Great Lover. The inherent humor of Der Tanzhusar can be summed up in a sentence: Everything the hero and his fellow Hussars do, they do wrong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ein Tango fuer Dich (A Tango For You) is the story of two jazz singers. Maxim (Paul Otto) is rich and famous; Jimmy (Willy Forst) is neither. Eventually, the status of the two heroes is reversed, but not before both have fallen in love with dancer Mady Smith (Fee Matten). When all is said and done, however, the plots never really mattered in these early-talkie operettas; if there were plenty of singers and dancers and plenty of songs and dance, the audience went home happy. American critics seemed delighted that director Geza Von Bolvary emulated Hollywood filmmaking techniques while putting together Ein Tango fuer Dich. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An early experiment in neo-realist filmmaking, Menschen Am Sonntag is a low-budget drama about two men, a cab driver and a salesman, who find themselves with nothing to do on a Sunday in Berlin. The friends pick up a couple of young women, and the four spend the day wandering the city streets before heading to a beach in Wannsee, where they go swimming and enjoy an idyllic afternoon by the lake. After a genial but determined attempt at seduction by the two men, the foursome returns to Berlin, with the depressing prospect of another working week looming before them. Menschen Am Sonntag is most notable today for the behind-the-camera contributions of several young German filmmakers who would later win greater fame after expatriating to the United States following the rise of the Third Reich, among them Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Curt Siodmak. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The producers of the German costume drama Beautiful Blue Danube insisted that the film was "based" on the Strauss waltz of the same name. Since the waltz lasts only 10 minutes or so, one assumes that the screenwriters took a great deal of literary license. Lya Mara stars as Mizzy, a pert cabaret dancer who uses the Strauss composition in her act. While waltzing her heart out for the crowd, Mizzy catches the eye of a handsome young Archduke (Hans Junkerman). The rest of the film follows the standard "duty before love" pattern established by such operettas as The Student Prince, the difference being that love conquers all in this case. Comedy relief was provided by Ernesto Verebes, a popular film farceur of the 1920s and 1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide