OH… ROSALINDA! Opera on Film

This riotously inventive musical fantasy was the third of British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s music-theatre extravaganzas, after The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffmann. An updating of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus to postwar Vienna, it tells the story of a playboy who plays a practical joke on an officer and his flirtatious wife at a masked ball. David Thomson noted, “This wonderful film never got a release in this country and fans of the music, of Powell and Pressburger’s artistry, pastel technicolor, and the fanciful pursued for its own sake can hardly miss the chance to see this pretty folly.”