"Der Kongreß tanzt" is hugely entertaining despite its weak plot and mostly non-descript acting. That is mainly due to the lavish sets and the score. But let's begin with the beginning. The plot concerns Viennese glove maker Christel (Lilian Harvey), who meets Czar Alexander I (Willy Fritsch) on occasion of the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15. Christel and Alexander fall in love, and complications ensue (in part because the czar has brought a double, also played by Fritsch) that end only with Napoleon's return from Elba. All this is closely followed by the Austrian chancellor Metternich (Conrad Veidt), who is busy turning the country into a police- and surveillance-state and intends to distract the czar from taking an active role in the congress. Harvey is charming; Fritsch has nothing more to do than look good, and Veidt does well as scheming politician. The sets and costumes are stunning (imagine this in technicolor!), allowing German audiences in 1931 to indulge in their passion for uniforms and the monarchy. But as mentioned above, what makes this film special is the music. There are some tunes that are so catchy that they are popular to this day: I never realised that 'Das gibt's nur einmal' was from this film before watching it last night. The whole scene, where Christel sings this song while riding the carriage out of Vienna into the countryside is utterly enchanting. To summarise: In part this film is obviously fluff intended to distract the viewers from the Great Depression. However, as such, its quality is outstanding. 'Der Kongreß tanzt' works brilliantly.

"Der Kongreß tanzt" (and I will do without mentioning the English title this time to avoid confusion with the English-language version) is a German German-language full feature film from 1931, so this one is already over 85 years old and was actually released before the Nazis took over to show you how old this one is. The director and writers are probably not too known anymore today, but is one of their most known works for sure and the cast with Harvey, Fritsch, Veidt and Dagover offers some names that are still pretty popular today, almost a century later. The title already gives away that music is a crucial component in this one here and looking at the year when this came out you will see that it is from the early days of sound film and honestly for that it is still quite an achievement as the audio side including the songs (with lyrics and orchestra) is easily the most memorable aspect of this 1.5-hour movie. "Das gibts nur einmal" is probably the highlight here and it's nice the song got featured at the very end again once more. As for the story, I was not too impressed. The actors are solid and try their best to elevate the mediocre script, but it never really catches my attention here. I also think with all the pompous uniforms and dresses this black-and-white flick would have been infinitely better with color, but I guess you can't blame the makers for the fact that technology wasn't ready enough by 1931. Colors like in these Söderbaum Nazi movies from one decade later would have been amazing here. Anyway, the movie was successful enough to be remade on several occasions and I already mentioned the other works from the same time. For example Harvey, Veidt and Dagover also appear in the English version, but Fritsch is replaced by another actor. But contents-wise I have little to no interest to check out any of these other version as I found this original already pretty forgettable. I have to give it a thumbs-down as this one did not get me dancing at all. Not recommended.