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(American-Rumanian Film Corp.) takes the stock comedy situation of an incompetent impostor and makes it amusing by treating it in a new way. Wilhelm Voigt, a washed-out little man with a wispy mustache, sets out to find a job after 27 years in jail. He discovers that he cannot get a job without a passport and cannot get a passport without a job. He notices, in an abashed way, that army officers seem to have an easy time getting anything they want. It is this observation which prompts him finally to a desperate and daring escapade. Wilhelm Voigt rents a captain's uniform in a pawnshop. He commandeers a troop of soldiers and marches them to the town of Kopenick. He has the mayor arrested and takes over the government of the town. When he learns that Kopenick is too small to have a passport bureau, Voigt takes off his uniform and surrenders to the police but by this time his exploit has been so thoroughly publicized that even the Kaiser has chuckled at it. The impostor is a celebrity and he gets not only a passport but a pardon for his misdemeanors.
Adapted from a play by Carl Zuckmayer based on an incident which occurred near Berlin in 1906, Der Hauptmann von Kopenick is a satire on military bureaucracy as well as a comic character study. The story moves slowly, as is generally the case in German cinema, but Max Adalbert acts it cleverly. English titles for German dialog are too carelessly done to help much.
The King's Vacation (Warner). It may be that there is a trace of snobbery in George Arliss's choice of roles, for he seldom impersonates anyone below a prime minister. This time he is a sort of sublimated Alfonso of Spain, the victim of a bloodless revolution who is delighted at losing his throne because it gives him a chance to go back to the woman he loved before he became a king. After all being a king had bored him to tears.
Just when it should have been most amusing, with the deposed monarch's discovery that his onetime inamorata is living in a palace and his queen is really a homebody, like himself, The King's Vacation loses most of its verve, works itself bluntly to a trite conclusion. Dignified, stylish and frail, like its principal actor, it is a picture which deserves notice mainly for the moments in which Arliss manages to extract the last drop of comedy from obvious situations. One such: King Philip rewarding the parents of the largest family in his domain by shaking hands with all their children.