Over the Waves: A dusty look at a legendary waltz

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you have a soft spot for old-school biopics that don't mind skipping over the messy parts of history, you might find something to like here. It's a bit stiff, sure, but it’s a decent enough watch if you like historical dramas that feel like they belong in a dusty archive. If you’re expecting a modern, fast-paced dive into his psyche, you’ll probably be bored within twenty minutes. It’s definitely for the crowd that prefers their movies to feel like an old photo album you found in an attic.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Over the Waves (1933) through its definitive frames.

The film is trying so hard to be grand, but it often lands on awkward. You can see the seams everywhere. Sometimes the actors are just standing there, waiting for the music to cue up so they can look suitably inspired. It reminded me a bit of the pacing in The Divine Woman, where things just sort of happen because they need to, not because the characters actually earned the beat.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Over the Waves (1933) through its definitive frames.

The music carries the weight

Whenever the waltz starts playing, the movie suddenly wakes up. It’s funny how that works. The rest of the time, it’s just people walking through doorways and having stiff conversations about fame. There's a scene near the middle where Rosas is supposed to be having a moment of artistic breakthrough, but the camera just lingers on his face for way too long. It’s almost funny how uncomfortable he looks.

• The costumes look like they were pulled straight out of a theater trunk.
• The dialogue is very... proper. Nobody talks like this, even in 1933.
• I’m still not sure why they included that random side character in the second act.

It has that same weird, stage-play energy I noticed in The Volga Boatman. Everything feels a little bit too staged, like the actors are afraid to knock over the furniture. It lacks the grit you'd find in something like Sex in Chains, where the environment actually feels like it's crushing the characters.

Anyway, it’s not a masterpiece. It’s just a movie about a guy who wrote a song everyone knows, even if they don't know his name. It’s perfectly fine for a rainy afternoon when you don't want to think too hard about complex plot points. Don't expect to be changed, just expect to be hummed at. 🎻