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Dancing girl Eva (Karin Dor) inherits a hotel at the sake Wolfgangsee
in Salzburg/Austria, so she quits her job to go to the lake with her best
friend Maxi (Trude Herr) and run the hotel - but to her despair, the hotel
is not totally run down and out of order, and run by a benign idiot,
Zacherl (Paul Löwinger), she also learns that along with the hotel she
has also inherited more debts than she can ever hope to earn in cash ...
so there is only one way out, she has to reopen the hotel to at least make
a little bit of money ...
Soon, Eva is helped by Gustl (Peter Kraus), a musician who's secretly
in love with her, and PR-girl Lotte (Hilde Brauner) and her friends, who
waste no time renovating her hotel, and within a few names it is opened as
the Schwarzes Rössl, to compete with the famous Wolfgangsee hotel Weisses
Rössl. And soon, Zacherl has lured the first guests to the hotel
using every trick in the book.
In the meantime, doctor Martin (Hans von Borsody), who happens to also
be the owner of the Weisses Rössl, has fallen madly in love with
Eva, but he can't give away his real identity and thus moves into her
hotel posing as a poor physician - and soon he has all the hotel's guests
who were about to leave the hotel due to its rather poor conditions that
the Schwarzes Rössl is actually a health resort. Eventually, Eva, who at
first thought Martin to be nothing but a show-off, falls in love with him.
Then though, the IRS stops by demanding a fortune in taxes, which Eva
doesn't have, so Martin somehow arranges a music revue at her hotel
without her knowing that he is behind the whole thing - heck, she even
finds out that he is actually the boss of the Weisses Rössl and,
heartbroken, wants to suddenly sell her hotel as quick as possible,
despite the fact that it has just turned into a goldmine - but
fortunately, Martin can scare off potential buyers just in time, can
convince her that she is actually sitting on a goldmine and can convince
her to stay - and the two of them end in each other's arms ...
Nope, Im Schwarzen Rössl is not a good film, it's a Schlager-film
(a sort-of musical with contemporary cheesy German-language pop-music, or Schlager,
if you may) with not-so-good music, with a less than original plot
that even manages to lose some of its narrative strands during the
proceedings, with some rather bad comedy, and with Karin Dor looking
rather out-of-place.
All that said, Im Schwarzen Rössl is actually one of my guilty
pleasures, one hundred percent !
The bad comedy is so bad it's good again, the songs and song and dance
routines are simply hilarious (if for the wrong reasons), and Karin Dor's
inappropriate acting style (in a film like this) is simpy endearing.
Of course, Im Schwarzen Rössl is not a film for everyone, and
drinking a few beers while watching it will definitely improve your
viewing experience, but if you manage to not take the film any seriously
and to for an hour and a half forget that you are not supposed to like
Schlager music, there's no reason for you to not like it.
By the way, 1972 director Franz Antel remade this film as Ausser
Rand und Band am Wolfgangsee/Cutting Loose at the Wolfgangsee,
with Paul Löwinger reprising his role as Zacherl - which is by far not as
funny (intentionally or unintentionally) as this one here.
And another thing: The title of Im Schwarzen Rössl is a direct
reference to Werner Jacobs' Im Weissen Rössl/White Horse Inn,
a smash hit at the box offices from the previous year, but apart from the
setting (the Wolfgangsee) and the leading lady (Karin Dor), the two films
have little in common.
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