Asta Nielsen stands to inherit the three million dollars her widowed, childless uncle, Max Landa, has made in Chicago. He's been there for years, and her parents believe that telling the very moral man she was born five years before they were married will disqualify her. So when Landa retires, moves back to Germany, and buys a castle, he invites his seventeen-year-old niece to stay with him, thinking her twelve. So the rambunctious girl must sneak her cigarettes. But at least she gets to slide down bannisters.
Miss Nielsen was 33 when she made this comedy, and she does a superb job. She's not afraid to look foolish, whether it's via frizzled hair, or getting stuck in a chair too small for her. There needs to be a plot, of course. So there's gold-digger Adele Reuter-Eichberg and her horrid mother and brother. And of course, Miss Nielsen must fall in love, so it's with Landa. And he, apparently feels an un-uncle-like fondness for her.
Did Billy Wilder have this in mind when he and Charles Brackett were writing THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR? Well, it's funny, and dramatically sensible, despite my objections. The copy I looked at was pretty good, although there's a lot of damage to the print in the early sequences.
