Review by MogwaiMovieReviews

This is a real find, that I'd never heard of till today, and which feels very much like a lost Max Ophuls confection, with the viennese setting and the dashing Anton Walbrook (the narrator of Ophuls' masterpiece La Ronde) in the lead as "Vienna's most elegant man". The photography is distinctive and insightful - the camera seems to see more than it should - and many moving images stay emblazoned on the mind much more like still photographs.

The story, of the scandal and misunderstandings surrounding a masked nude portrait of a prominent society lady, would in Hollywood have been little more than a run-of-the-mill farce, but here is filled with delicate emotional touches, insight and romance, and I can't help but think it would be far better known today if it hadn't been filmed in the German language in the lead up to the second world war.