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through marriage. To this end, Secret
Service man Hercules is despatched to her aid. Hercules frees Paris, and a meeting is arranged between Paris and Helen. The result is just as Läspia and Hercules had hoped: Helena falls in love with the beautiful singing prince and rejects the king. However, Menelaus has inadvertently consumed a love potion meant for Paris, and is consumed by a violent desire for Helena.
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Helena flees to Paris and returns the contract. Menelaus wakes finally to the danger threatening his country and sends the royalist party's fifth column to the East and ten thousand troops to
Thermopylae to defend the province. Helena is forced to cancel her flight to put her seal on a royal divorce.
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in
Stockholm, Anders Sandrew laid out a substantial sum to get the operetta star into his studio. However, the way that the plot became a political farce – depicting emerging East-West relations – was not to the taste of Stockholm newspaper critics. One of them (Gunnar Oldin) went so far as to claim
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Sandwiched between the East and the West, is the neutral, small, carefree kingdom of
Arcadia. Its two powerful neighbours vie for world domination. The eastern neighbour's ruler Trojanus has recently taken several minor states under his "protection". Prince Paris is shackled and put aboard a Trojan
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Despite Helena's chilly responses to the love-sick
Menelaus, Hector urges her to marry the king. The Trojan ambassador is still hoping for a lease on Thermopylae, and the prospect of a wedding night with beauty queen leads Menelaus on when the marriage contract is drawn up. On the wedding night
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Läspia discovers that her wooer is the king himself, and starts a counter-plot to out-manoeuvre the future queen. When Helena arrives, she takes her place in the chamber of honour. Läspia is supported by the United States of Rome who want to prevent
Trojanus getting power over the Arcadian king
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Meanwhile, Arcadia is unaware of all these plans. Under an assumed name King
Menelaus amuses himself playing ping-pong with the delightful fashion model Läspia. Unbeknown to the King the plotting Calchas has made a deal with Trojanus' ambassador, Hector, for a marriage for Menelaus. The chosen
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ship as a galley-slave. Trojanus believes that the
Arcadian province Thermopylae, with its mountain passes would make a useful route to the west and begins an intrigue to usurp the area peacefully. He has sought the support of Arcadia's royalists, who form a treacherous fifth column.
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Läspia enters the bedroom and manages to lock Paris in there. When
Menelaus enters, he realizes that his new wife is unfaithful, by counting the number of feet sticking out from the end of the bed. Läspia's scheme has succeeded.
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consort is the Trojan beauty queen Helen. When the king is told of his imminent entry into matrimony, he is dismayed; the prospect of a foreign wife by his side and having to abandon Läspia does not appeal to him.
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Communist MP and editor of the 'New Day' paper, Gustav
Johansson claimed that "old Offenbach has been mobilized in America's cold war against the peace movement". The female critic 'Lill' in the '
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started around May 1950 and was completed by the middle of July. An Arcadian quayside was built around the jetty at
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Eva Dahlbeck (Helena), at this time early in her career, would soon play Desirée Armfeldt in Bergman's film
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that the film had become "a mixture of Offenbach and the Soviet defector
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Kjerstin Dellert biography at the Kungliga Teaterns Solister website
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Menelaus may now join Läspia and make her the new queen of Arcadia.
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Elisaveta von Gersdorff Oxenstierna/Elisaveta - Läspia,
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Swedish Film Institute essay on Sköna Helena; Comments.
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who went on to an international career (including the
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The film had its premiere on 26 December 1951 at the
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Following Max Hansen's major success in Offenbach's
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