It tells the story of two young Berliners: Anni von Aspen (Anny Ondra), the daughter of an aristocratic family, is determined to become a dancer – just like her friend Susi Hille (Mary Parker), who performs as a showgirl on a revue stage. Anni’s father thinks his daughter’s career aspirations are “crazy.” To change her mind, he sends her to a girls’ boarding school in London. Anni is accompanied by her friend Susi, who wants to improve her dancing skills with the famous “Tillergirls” in the British capital. On the way, they meet three young Englishmen who get their names mixed up. Instead of clearing up the misunderstanding, the two women simply swap identities: while Susi pretends to be Anni, Anni moves into the “Tillergirls” as Susi and upsets the strict rules of the director. And soon, in the company of her friend and two enterprising gentlemen, the London club scene.
SUZY SAXOPHONE is a star vehicle for Anny Ondra: tailored entirely to the then 25-year-old, who was already famous in her Czech homeland and Austria, she captured the hearts of German cinema audiences with this film, among others. Ondra embodied a new type of woman who, coming from the U.S. after the end of the First World War, became style-defining in Europe: young, self-confident women who wore their hair short, showed their legs, smoked in public and danced the Charleston or foxtrot, always radiating a completely unmannerly joie de vivre – the so-called “flapper girls.”
Jazz and dance enthusiasm are the overarching theme of SUZY SAXOPHONE and an anticipation of the sound film era that began shortly afterwards, whose first years were characterized by countless melodious operettas and musical comedies. SUZY SAXOPHONE also features groovy music and dance interludes in central scenes, which were accompanied live by a jazz combo at the film’s premiere in 1928 – and was revived at the UFA Film Nights by Frido ter Beek and The Sprockets film orchestra .
The UFA Film Nights premiered the digitally restored version of SUZY SAXOPHONE by the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF).
