Clevercell Very disappointing...

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

morrison-dylan-fan 2013:With my dad being a big fan of actress Deanna Durbin,I took a look at her IMDb page,and found 2 titles which have never come out on DVD or Video.Tracking down It's a Date,I was surprised to discover that there appeared to be no sign of the movie anywhere at all.2016:Realizing that my dads birthday was about to come up,I decided to do one last attempt at tracking this obscure Durbin flick down.Stumbling onto the page of a DVD seller,I was delighted to finally find the title-with a bonus short!,which led to me getting ready to finally join the spring parade.The plot:Traveling to a Viennese fair, Ilonka Tolnay picks up a card which claims that a number of events will soon happen to her,which will include Tolnay meeting the love of her life,who is passionate about music. Laughing off the claims,Tolnay gets a job at a bakery. Whilst working at the bakery,Tolnay meets Corporal Harry Marten,who dreams of becoming a famous composer,but is banned by the army from doing so.Believing that she has met her dream guy,Tolnay decides to try and make Marten's dream come true.View on the film:Blocked by Universal from being seen again after Ernst Neubach sued them for not crediting him for his role in the making of the 1934 original Frühjahrsparade/Spring Parade.Despite featuring a limited amount of songs,the writers give the title a sweet whimsical spin,where Tolnay's attempts to have Marten's music heard has a sweet folk tale atmosphere. Whilst the poor print quality blocks director Henry Koster's candy coloured sets from sparkling, Deanna Durbin gives a terrific,jaunty performance as Tolnay,thanks to Durbin joyfully casting a fairy tale breeze over Tolnay,as Tolnay and Marten go on the spring parade.

rsstone Deanna Durbin sang with one of the most beautiful voices ever recorded. This film generously preserves some fine samples of that fact. But perhaps the prospective viewer should know that its story line is much simpler than film stories today where intricate plot twists and violent thrills are expected. Director Henry Koster crafted a sweet comedy about a superstitious, but strong-minded country girl who is fated to meet a self-centered, but talented, corporal who tries to act like a big shot. Henry Koster proves his craftsmanship in his ability to knit together so simple a story and make it interesting and even, in places, arresting. Durbin plays a Hungarian peasant from Szilagy-Somlyo. (It's fun to hear her say it! It happened to be producer Joe Pasternak's childhood home town. Also, how amusing it is to see Durbin, an "All-American Girl," dressed up rather like Eva Braun! Durbin is so beautiful that it does not matter.) The title SPRING PARADE makes no sense to the story line, and that is a clue to understanding the larger, but sad, history of this film. The truth is that the film was first made by Pasternak in 1934, when he produced movies for Universal Studios in Austria and Hungary. Today the first film is identified by either of two names, FRÜHLINGSPARADE or FRÜHJAHRSPARADE, which mean "spring's parade." It tells a probably somewhat fictionalized story of the composition of a famous Austrian military march, the "Deutschmeister Regiments Marsch" by Wilhelm August Jurek in 1893. In the story Jurek is inspired by the rhythmic tapping of his girlfriend in an open-air Viennese restaurant. The climax of the story comes at the end of the film when Emperor Francis Joseph I praises the march while reviewing his troops. Jurek's regiment plays it while passing by. The title SPRING PARADE in that context makes sense. In the Durbin version, the march is replaced by the composition of a waltz. In 1934, Hitler had been chancellor only a year, and a story about a popular march from 1893 was unexceptional. By 1940, however, a movie about a rousing German march would be exceptional. The year 1893 gives the viewer of SPRING PARADE a peg to hang the story on. Now we know that it comes after the assassination of the Empress Elisabeth (Sisi). It adds poignancy to the scenes of the lonely emperor in his royal apartments. In the 1934 film, Joe Pasternak made a big mistake. The screen credits attributed the story to Ernst Marischka, but, in fact, Marischka wrote the screen play from an original story by Ernst Neubach, who was not credited. After World War II, Neubach settled in France. In 1949, he sued Universal Studios for violation of his copyright, and won. Universal Studios lost all rights to, what was for them, a most cherished film. And it disappeared from the public square. No studio-made VHS, DVD, or Blu-Ray disc has ever appeared. One can reasonably wonder about its current status as a property. Has it passed into the public domain? In 1955, FRÜHJAHRSPARADE was remade in color by Ernst Marischka with the title DIE DEUTSCHMEISTER, starring a young Romy Schneider. Wouldn't it be nice if, say, a manufacturer like the Criterion Collection would release a three-film set with FRÜHLINGSPARADE/FRÜHJAHRSPARADE (1934), SPRING PARADE (1940), and DIE DEUTSCHMEISTER (1955), all restored with extras like sections, subtitles, and commentary? Detailed information about SPRING PARADE can be downloaded in PDF format from the academic journal Modern Austrian Literature, Volume 32, Number 3 (or 4), 1999, Special Issue: Austria in Film. The paper is "Spring Parade (1940): Imperial Austria Lives Again (at Universal)," by Jan-Christopher Horak, pp. 74-86. The Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center of the U. S. National Archives at Culpeper, Virginia, owns a copy of SPRING PARADE, and they have given it at least three public showings. It is probably a clean positive without breaks. The music of SPRING PARADE is significant, with a fine march, two waltzes, and a comic song by Prof. Robert Stolz from 1934. The talented Gus Kahn contributed new lyrics to the music that Durbin sings. Charles Previn of Universal added his own march, which is very fine and needs to be heard today. Finally, Mr. Kahn wrote lyrics to Hans J. Salter's "Blue Danube Dream," which re-works the "Blue Danube Waltz." Durbin's performance of this is magnificent. Just on the music alone this film has cultural significance. It and its sister films should be conserved, restored, and seen again as they were meant to be seen.

krtqaa Thought I reviewed this the other day, but apparently, that never posted. This is probably Deanna Durbin's best effort. She is most natural in the role; one suspects that the director brought out the closest expression of the real girl, here. It gains further power from the remarkable performances of a strong supporting cast. For example, the Baker--played by a well known supporting figure in movies over a couple of decades, also seems most natural here, compared to any other role, in which this reviewer has seen him. His story nephews, here, are far more natural, far better developed than they were in a W.C. Fields movie released in the same era. So too, are other familiar performers from the same era. Was Deanna, the Director, or a combination, the spark that brought out the best in almost everyone? Who can say. But the movie, on a modest budget, perhaps, communicates real joy to the viewer--real cinema magic, that has held up for me from the time I saw it first (seven times) at age 6 1/2 and 7, till I bought DVD's for myself and some other members of my family, within the past year.It was my favorite movie in 1941. Viewed again, frequently, over the past seven months, it remains my favorite movie. (And that despite the fact that I am usually not that great a fan of musicals!)

SanDiego 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.