Münchhausen

This film somehow manages to be charming and fantastic despite having been made in Nazi Germany in 1943, in the very depths of World War 2. You wouldn't know it to watch it, considering the hero is favourably disposed to the Russia of Catherine the Great, and we even see their famous romance that would later form part of the Baron's unreliable backstory in the 1988 Adventures of Baron Munchausen film.

The Baron also rejects the desire for power as a motivation, which he explicitly states in a conversation with his ambitious frival Count Cagliostro. The fact that Münchhausen is in colour, something that was incredibly rare for films of this era, also helps it feel like it comes from a different time. Or perhaps I mean that it helps this film feel timeless?

The film is a clear inspiration for Terry Gilliam's take on the character, and some scenes are very closely paralleled by his superb '80s film, most obviously the Baron riding on a cannonball (which this film plays straight, and the later film both subverts and plays straight!), the wager with the Sultan over the bottle of Tokay - in this sequence there are some shots that are almost exactly replicated by Gilliam's version - and the Baron travelling to the moon in a balloon.

The SFX sprinkled throughout the Baron's fantastisch adventures are simple but incredibly well used. And the one I found to be the most effective wasn't really an effect at all, but a simple piece of audience misdirection, when the framing device for the story is revealed to us to be set in the present day (well... the present day when it was made) and not in the 18th century only when the Baron - who is dressed in a full 18th century outfit, as are all the other characters we see in these early scenes - switches on an electric light. Then a guest at his period costume ball drives away in her car.