Henry Bender

The sound re-make of Alraune (1928) also starring Brigitte Helm. (imdb)

A tourist guide in Naples is taken on by an English woman impressed by his singing, and who regards him as her protege. This film was released as a German version and English Version known as "The City of Song". Brigitte Helm once portrays a beautiful femme fatale who displays her affection and lust for her tourist guide which is paralleled with the main bodied theme of the early romanticist songs played throughout. (imdb)

The Germans were not far behind when if came to experimenting with sound and the surviving discs seem like a curious anachronism because they closely resemble the Vitaphone discs from the mid-1920s: about sixteen inches in diameter and the track started from the center and the needle moved out.

This 'musical burlesque' tells about a stylish young gentleman (Willi Forst) who works as a so-called 'Festredner'; an untranslatable term, it indicates a person who makes speeches at important events like marriages etc. for people who don't feel able to do it themselves. Willi lends his voice to a speech-impaired professor, but the baroness (Trude Lieske) who falls in love with Hörbiger only does so because of Willi's voice, and you can guess that this leads to all sorts of complications...

The manufacturer Florian Pieper, who comes from vinegar and cucumber, invented the insect powder Pieperlin. He believes that he can use it to conquer the German market and therefore goes to the metropolis of Berlin. But the naive country egg is here on a pavement that it cannot cope with: everything is bigger, everything is faster and brighter, and dangers lurk everywhere for a straw widower, a single "sinful" temptation.

The film has been described as a hymn to Austria.