I'm shocked that something like Oh...Rosalinda!! is considered a minor work from Powell & Pressburger and has remained largely unseen on this website. I mean, certainly Rosalinda is a rather straightforward blend of opera and farce and lacks some of the draw that more well-known Powell & Pressburger collaborations offer (the psychological turmoil of The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, the overt political edge of Colonel Blimp, the heavenly romance of A Matter of Life and Death), but this has to be the most impressively realized film in their catalog, especially of their postwar experiments in staging the most colorful and theatrical films on the market. With Rosalinda and their prior work The Tales of Hoffmann, the two seemed eager to expand the style of one of their most legendary sequences (the central ballet in The Red Shoes) into a full-scale effort to rival Hollywood Technicolor magic happening from creatives like Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli. Indeed, it's easy to compare this film to the grand musical spectacles of the era like An American in Paris or Gigi and each time Oh...Rosalinda!! could easily stand among the best of the genre. I think maybe the opera it adapts can come across a bit cutesy with its mistaken identities and infidelities but everything feels so charming and masterfully handled here. There's one scene in particular of a character's drunken journey home that stood out as one of the best film sequences I've seen all year, period. Powell & Pressburger might be my favorite directors after this or at least deserve a strong shot at the prize.

I'm shocked that something like Oh...Rosalinda!! is considered a minor work from Powell & Pressburger and has remained largely unseen on this website. I mean, certainly Rosalinda is a rather straightforward blend of opera and farce and lacks some of the draw that more well-known Powell & Pressburger collaborations offer (the psychological turmoil of The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, the overt political edge of Colonel Blimp, the heavenly romance of A Matter of Life and Death), but this has to be the most impressively realized film in their catalog, especially of their postwar experiments in staging the most colorful and theatrical films on the market. With Rosalinda and their prior work The Tales of Hoffmann, the two seemed eager to expand the style of one of their most legendary sequences (the central ballet in The Red Shoes) into a full-scale effort to rival Hollywood Technicolor magic happening from creatives like Gene Kelly and Vincente Minnelli. Indeed, it's easy to compare this film to the grand musical spectacles of the era like An American in Paris or Gigi and each time Oh...Rosalinda!! could easily stand among the best of the genre. I think maybe the opera it adapts can come across a bit cutesy with its mistaken identities and infidelities but everything feels so charming and masterfully handled here. There's one scene in particular of a character's drunken journey home that stood out as one of the best film sequences I've seen all year, period. Powell & Pressburger might be my favorite directors after this or at least deserve a strong shot at the prize.