DVD: The Dancing Years, The Rat

The Dancing Years and The Rat are seemingly very different films. The Dancing Years (***, 1950) is a British musical which defines frou-frou. With a springing-off point in the dizzy world of the waltz-obsessed Vienna of 1910, its lingering shots of spectacular scenery, meringue-light music, pastel-shaded costumes and unrequited love, it’s the sort of film a fan of Barbara Cartland romances would love.

The Rat (***, 1937) is black and white and also set in a continental European capital city, this time Paris. The story of a master criminal who sticks to the promise he made to look after a condemned man’s daughter, it has fights, low-life bars, rich people with dodgy morals and, of course, unrequited love.

The two films are linked by the fact that each was conceived by Ivor Novello. The music award which bears his name and his creepy appearance in Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927) were just part of the story. Novello (1893-1951, born David Davies in Wales) was initially a songwriter, and then acted in film and on stage. Despite a spell in jail during World War II due to abuse of the rationing regulations, his career thrived into the 1950s. His last stage show was 1951’s Gay's the Word.

The Dancing Years was a film version of Novello’s hit 1939 stage musical. He had written the story and music, and was seen on the boards in the original production. In the film, his part of Rudi Kleber is taken by a mostly diffident Dennis Price. The main love interest is singer Maria Zeitler (Gisèle Préville, pictured right with Price). Kleber is a struggling composer in lederhosen: a chance encounter brings Zeitler to Kleber, and, entranced by his music, she makes him a star and sorts his wardrobe out. He loves her and she loves him – but the romance does not work out. This marshmallow of a film is presented on DVD with its trailers and an image gallery. Although the picture is exceptionally sharp there is a slightly distracting issue with shading where, within scenes, moments look as if successive passing clouds are shadowing the image.

The Rat is just as enjoyable. It was originally a 1924 play which Novello wrote, produced and stared in. It became a silent-film vehicle for him in 1925 that was followed by a couple of sequels. This, the 1937 adaptation, stars a magnificently suave Anton Walbrook as Jean Boucheron aka the Rat, in the role Novello had filled. He becomes entranced by another woman with an exotic Z in her name, Zélia de Chaumont (Ruth Chatterton). She is high society and likes slumming it, while he inhabits the slums and initially just wants to steal her pearls. Naturally, she almost but not-quite tames this wild man. The transfer looks great and the only extra is an image gallery.

Nether film will tax anyone, but each is a thoroughly agreeable reminder that pre-1960s British cinema was adept at crafting enjoyable escapist fare which still entertains. They are also valuable reminders of the importance of Ivor Novello to British popular culture.

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Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Dancing Years and a clip from The Rat

Watch the trailer for The Dancing Years

Watch a clip from The Rat