Johanna Matz

If you agonized through “Amadeus”, cringing at the depiction of a giggling buffoon and his featherbrained Constanze, shuddering at the underlying premise that God gave the gift to the wrong man for reasons we just can’t understand, then this film may provide you with a pleasant antidote. Filmed in 1955, probably in anticipation of the bicentenary of his birth, it gives a totally different view of the composer, and recreates the last year of his life on a more intimate anti-blockbuster scale. But though it is an engaging effort with many fine points, it doesn’t succeed in redeeming Mozart from the fictions of Milos Forman’s travesty, because it is itself a fictionalization that distorts in its own way the character of the composer.Read More »

“Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach” (English translation: “The Virgin on the Roof”) is a comedy film produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Carl Zuckmayer is a German language translation of the script for “The Moon is Blue” by F. Hugh Herbert, based on his 1951 play.
A comedy of manners, the film centers on virtuous actress Patty O’Neill, who meets playboy architect Donald Gresham on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and accepts his invitation to join him for drinks and dinner in his apartment. There she meets Donald’s upstairs neighbors, his ex-fiancée Cynthia and her father, roguish David Slader.Read More »