Giglio imperiale

Billie Dove is in town to visit her brother, Doctor Nicholas Soussanin. Meanwhile, Archduke Clive Brook shows up with his current amour, Jane Winton, with whom he is getting bored. He orders her to return to the capital, she takes poison and is rushed to the doctor, soon followed by Brook, who makes some cynical remarks to Miss Dove. She replies with contempt. After Miss Winton is disposed of, he decides he wants Miss Dove. In the rather old-fashioned manner of these things, he offers her insults, gets her brother away on a pretext, and invades her bedroom. When Soussanin returns, Brook is showing signs of a feeble conscience, and Miss Dove realizes she loves him.

Huh? Anyway, an altercation ensues, Brook is injured, and it's Soussanin and Miss Dove who are in trouble, because Daddy Archduke Marc McDermott disapproves of, well, everything.

At first I thought there were some gaps in this movie, but the IMDb shows it at 65 minutes, and that's how long the copy I saw took. Brook spends the entire movie alternating a sneer with a grim look. I suspect he was freshly back from working with Demille and Paramount didn't have anything to put him in. Or perhaps they wished to punish him. Sound was on the horizon, and the major studios would soon be trying to cut the wages of their expensive stars. With his stage training, they couldn't claim he didn't have a suitable voice. Director Alexander Korda was in Hollywood, learning how to direct movies that would appeal to more than his fellow Hungarians, so they gave him a story by Lajos Biros, filtered it through screenwriter Bess Meredyth, and got ready for sound.

Billie Dove stars as a beautiful country girl who catches the eye of a roguish archduke (Clive Brook) while visiting her brother who is the local doctor. He's easily bored with his conquests and is trying to get rid of an actress (Jane Winton) to turns dramatic and threatens to kill herself if he sends her away. He sends her away so she swallows a vial of poison and collapses dramatically on the steps.

She's taken to the doctor, but of course she was merely faking. That clears the way for Brook to pursue Love, but she has no interest in him. He holds a fancy ball and invites her and the brother but she eludes all his attempts to corner her in a locked room.

Finally, he has the doctor called away on a fake medical emergency so he can corner Love in her own house. But the doctor catches on and races back to save his sister. He then confronts the archduke with a pistol but it's knocked out of his hand. Love picks it up and fires just as Brook is about to kill the doctor.

While Brook hovers between life and death, Love and the doctor are imprisoned. When the archduke's father tries to trick Love into admitting a murder attempt (rather than an accident), she defies his threats and returns to jail. But as the archdukes recovers, he realizes the error of his ways and tries to free Love and the doctor. Will love conquer all? Billie Dove and Jane Winton are gorgeous here, both dark haired and big eyed. Clive Brook has the proper look of cruelty. Gustav von Seyffertitz is sleazy as the assistant. Marc McDermott and Eugenie Besserer are fine as the archduke's parents. Nicholas Soussanin plays the doctor. The sets are impressive, and the costumes lavish. But the story seems a tad familiar. The title refers to the name of a waltz they dance to.