Viktor und Viktoria’s main point of interest today lies in its being a musical comedy that is greatly influenced by the American model, with its choreographed sequences and parades, clusters of pretty girls that open up like bunches of flowers, its overhead shots, its plot based around simple narrative threads etc. […] Finally, and most importantly of all, Viktor und Viktoria repeatedly plays with situations created by misleading appearances within show business, which constitute a series of reflections on systems of representation, on the search for identity and on the discovery of the self through love. All things that, with a bit more spice and ambiguity, contribute to the appeal of Blake Edwards’ film. But could they have gone further than this in 1933? The comparison between the two films, separated by fifty years, allows us to gauge, along with the progress made along the way, the artistic possibilities created by an evolution in mindset. This, too, is History!

Marcel Oms, in “Cahiers de la Cinémathèque”, 37, 1983