Victor Victoria

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This article is about the film. For the musical stage production, see Victor/Victoria (musical).
Victor Victoria

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Blake Edwards
Produced by Tony Adams
Blake Edwards
Based on 1933 script by
Reinhold Schünzel
Starring Julie Andrews
James Garner
Robert Preston
Lesley Ann Warren
Music by Songs:
Henry Mancini
Leslie Bricusse (Lyrics)
Score:
Henry Mancini
Cinematography Dick Bush
Editing by Ralph E. Winters
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) March 16, 1982 (1982-03-16)
Running time 132 minutes
Country United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Box office $28,215,453

Victor Victoria is a 1982 musical comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that involves homosexuality, transvestism and sexual identity as central themes. It stars Julie Andrews, James Garner, Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren, Alex Karras, and John Rhys-Davies. The film was produced by Tony Adams, directed by Blake Edwards, and scored by Henry Mancini, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse. It was adapted in 1995 as a Broadway musical. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won the Academy Award for Original Music Score. It is a remake of Viktor und Viktoria, a German film of 1933.

Contents

[edit] Plot

In 1934, Carroll Todd, aka Toddy, a middle-aged gay performer at Chez Lui in Paris, sees Labisse, the club owner, auditioning a wan and impoverished soprano, Victoria Grant. After the audition, Labisse drily writes her off, and she responds by sustaining a pitch to shatter his wine glass using resonant frequency. That night a club brawl leads Labisse to fire Toddy and ban him from the club. Walking home, he spots Victoria dining at a restaurant, and she invites him to join her. As neither of them can pay for the meal, she dumps a cockroach in her salad to avoid paying their check, but it escapes and the whole place breaks out in havoc. The duo run out through the rain to Toddy's, and he invites her to stay when she finds that the rain has shrunken her cheap clothes.

The next morning Richard, a young hustler who was Toddy's lover, shows up to collect his things. Wearing Richard's clothes, Victoria surprises him, punches him after he insults Toddy, and literally kicks him out. Witnessing this, Toddy is struck with the inspiration of passing Victoria off as a man and presenting her to Andre Cassell, the most successful agent in Paris, as a female impersonator.

Cassell accepts her as Count Victor Grazinski, a gay Polish female impersonator and Toddy's new boyfriend. Cassell gets her an initial nightclub show and invites a collection of club owners to the opening. Among the guests is gangster King Marchand, an owner of multiple clubs in Chicago. King attends the opening with his ditsy moll Norma Cassidy and burly bodyguard Bernstein, aka Squash. Victor is a hit, and King is smitten, but devastated and incredulous when she is "revealed" as a man at the end of her act. After Norma endlessly riles him over it, and his subsequent failure with her later that night, he sends her back to America.

Determined to get the truth of Victor's gender, King sneaks into Victoria and Toddy's suite and confirms his suspicion when he spys her getting into the bath. He keeps his knowledge secret and invites Victoria, Toddy, and Cassell to Chez Lui, where Toddy is now welcomed due to Victor's status as a big star. Another fight breaks out and Squash and Toddy are arrested with the bulk of the club clientelle, but King and Victoria escape, leading them to get together.

Squash returns to the suite and catches King with Victoria in bed. King tries to explain, but soon receives a shocker himself - Squash reveals himself to be gay. Meanwhile, Labisse hires a P.I., Charles Bovin, to investigate Victor. Victoria and King live together for awhile, but keeping up the public act of Victoria being a man strains the relationship and King ends it.

Back in Chicago, Norma tells King's club partner Sal Andretti (Norman Chancer), that King is having a gay affair with Victor. At the same time that Victoria has decided to give up the persona of Victor in order to be with King, Sal arrives and demands that King transfer his share of the empire to Sal for a small portion of its worth. Squash tells Victoria what's happening, and she interrupts the paperwork signing to show Norma that she is really a woman, and prevent King from having to lose his stake.

That night at the club Cassell tells Toddy and Victoria that Labisse has lodged a complaint that Victor is actually a woman and therefore the club is perpetrating a fraud. Moments later the inspector arrives at the dressing room and enters to make his inspection, but returns to tell Labisse that the performer is a man and Labisse is an idiot. This requires that the man the inspector met actually performs, so Toddy appears on stage as Victor, allowing Victoria to join King in the audience as herself.

The audience enjoys Toddy's delightfully obvious drag performance, being Victor's last. The film ends with King, Squash, Victoria, Cassell and the public applauding enthusiastically.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Musical numbers

The vocal numbers in the film are presented as nightclub acts. However, the lyrics or situations of some of the songs are calculated to relate to the unfolding drama. Thus, the two staged numbers Le Jazz Hot and The Shady Dame from Seville help to present Victoria as a female impersonator. The latter number is later reinterpreted by Toddy for diversionary purposes in the plot, and the cozy relationship of Toddy and Victoria is promoted by the song You and Me, which is sung before the audience at the nightclub.[1]

  1. "Gay Paree" - Toddy
  2. "Le Jazz Hot" - Victoria
  3. "The Shady Dame From Seville" - Victoria
  4. "You and Me" - Toddy, Victoria
  5. "Chicago, Illinois" - Norma
  6. "Crazy World" - Victoria
  7. "Finale/Shady Dame From Seville (Reprise)" - Toddy

[edit] Production

The film's screenplay was adapted by Blake Edwards (Andrews' husband) and Hans Hoemburg from the 1933 German film Viktor und Viktoria by Reinhold Schünzel. According to Edwards, the screenplay took only one month to write. There was also a 1935 remake named First a Girl, made in the United Kingdom and directed by Victor Saville, about a woman who stands in for a female impersonator and becomes a hit. Julie Andrews watched the 1933 version to prepare for her role.[2]

[edit] Reception

Victor/Victoria currently holds a 96% 'fresh' rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "Driven by a fantastic lead turn from Julie Andrews, Blake Edwards' musical gender-bender is sharp, funny and all-round entertaining."[3]

[edit] Awards

Victor/Victoria won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Adaptation Score. It was nominated for:

American Film Institute recognition

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Victor/Victoria". Allmovie. http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:52384. Retrieved 2 January 2009. 
  2. ^ Stirling, Richard (2008). Julie Andrews: An Intimate Biography. Macmillan. pp. 272. ISBN 0312380259. 
  3. ^ Victor/Victoria at Rotten Tomatoes
  4. ^ "NY Times: Victor/Victoria". NY Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/52384/Victor-Victoria/awards. Retrieved 2009-01-01. 

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Victor/Victoria
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