Considered a musical comedy, L’epreuve du temps [Wunschkonzert] does more than offer just entertainment to its audience. From this point of view the seriousness of the title adopted for the film’s distribution in France reveals another dimension of a work that the Nazi press in its publication “Völkischer Beobachter” took offence to: “the impression of truth often disappears when spontaneity, freshness and the joy of living make way for cheap emotions”. (…) Without doubt, the glitter and sparkle of the culture within the film – cinema according to Marika Rökk and Heinz Rümann, radio with star entertainers like Heinz Goedecke, singers, musicians and even sport – at first glance seem to have no political purpose whatsoever. But what it does seem to do is give some degree of shelter to private life in a historical period demanding uncalculated sacrifice. At the same time Marika Rökk’s song is ideologically aggressive because it succeeds in suffocating the terror and lucidity that should govern any reflection on the age of Nazi dictatorship … Moreover, at the end of the film, in the auditorium, the audience all sing together “Denn wir fahren gen Engel- land” (“Why we are marching on England”) by Norbert Schultze; but the air battle against Britain turned out to be the first significant defeat for Germany… Could this be a clue to the ambiguity of the film as denounced by the “Völkischer Beobachter”?

Jörg Turschmann, Cahiers de la Cinémathèque, n. 55/56, décembre 1991