Confetti (1936)

Shrove Tuesday: While salesgirl Franzi has already danced through several nights and uses her working hours to sleep, Hanni Gruber, a “good girl,” has not been out celebrating even once, preferring to look after the sale of dolls and fabrics. The lowly clerk Kümmelmann is secretly in love with Hanni and arranges two tickets to the Redoute, the city’s biggest costume ball. He invites Hanni, who, on his responsibility, “borrows” the most expensive dress in the shop and some jewelry. The two arrange to meet at the ball that evening. Professor Vinzenz Kornmeier also has to attend the Redoute, where he is supposed to meet his publisher. The publisher wants to bring out one of Kornmeier’s books and finalize the contract in a box at the ballroom. Kornmeier’s wife, Ida, is suspicious, however, and accompanies her husband. August Sommerbauer’s wife is suspicious, too. Sommerbauer is Kümmelmann and Hanni’s boss. He actually plans to meet friends and celebrate at the Redoute, but tells his wife he is going on a business trip to St. Pölten. She promptly accompanies him to the train and waits until it has left. Unnoticed, Sommerbauer manages to jump off the moving train and sneak off to the Redoute. There he sees Hanni in the borrowed dress, but does not recognize her. She flees from him into a box belonging to the well-known aviator Helmut von Sörensen. She claims to be his wife, and when Sörensen appears shortly afterward, he conceals his true identity from her. Sommerbauer has stationed himself outside the box, intent on exposing the thief, so Hanni cannot leave and has to keep up her game of pretending to be someone else in front of Sörensen. Meanwhile, in the neighboring box, Kornmeier has signed the contract, which stipulates that he must add a few more chapters to his book. Sommerbauer knows Ida from a visit to the doctor, and when he looks into Kornmeier’s box while searching for the dress thief, he is now forced to dance with Ida. When Sörensen briefly leaves the box to pay, Hanni asks Kornmeier, who is left alone, to pretend to be her husband, Sörensen, so she can escape from the real Sörensen, who has claimed to be a detective. Elated after signing the contract, Kornmeier agrees, and soon has to accompany Hanni into a taxi and to Sörensen’s villa, since the real Sörensen follows them. They, in turn, want to prevent the deception involving the fake Mr. and Mrs. Sörensen from becoming obvious. When they arrive at Sörensen’s, even the aviator’s servant lets the couple in at a gesture from the real Sörensen. Sörensen, meanwhile, pretends to have car trouble and makes a phone call from inside his house. Out of habit, he puts some cigarettes in his pocket, and Hanni and Kornmeier now take him for a thief. In a panic, Hanni entrusts Kornmeier with the jewelry she borrowed. After Kornmeier secretly leaves to notify the police about the thief Sörensen, and Hanni forces Sörensen to empty his pockets, Sörensen finally reveals his true identity to her. The two dance, but when Sörensen’s servant, without being asked, prepares a bed for them both, Hanni flees, disappointed. Kornmeier reports the theft to the police, but they find only the real Sörensen in his own house. Kornmeier’s wife leaves him after finding the borrowed jewelry on him and because she also saw him disappear with Hanni the day before. Before leaving, however, she locks the jewelry in a cupboard. Kümmelmann then breaks into the cupboard in Kornmeier’s presence, just as Kornmeier receives a police summons. The reason: misleading the police in the Sörensen case. Hanni fell while wearing the dress that night, leaving it dirty and torn. She is dismissed because of the damaged dress, which Sörensen buys shortly afterward, now finally knowing who the mysterious woman from the previous evening was. Kümmelmann, for his part, now does everything he can to bring the two together, since he blames himself for all the trouble. In the end, everyone is summoned to court because Kornmeier wants to prove his innocence. But no one supports him: Sommerbauer testifies that he was in St. Pölten, not at the Redoute, and his wife confirms this, since she saw him leave by train. Sörensen’s servant can swear that the only stranger in Sörensen’s villa was Kornmeier himself, and not a thief, as Kornmeier claimed. And Kümmelmann, whom Kornmeier had urged during the hearing to finally be quiet, promptly follows that instruction when he is questioned. In the end, Kornmeier is declared insane and committed to a psychiatric hospital. He is delighted, since he can finally finish writing his novel. After all the misunderstandings, Sörensen and Hanni finally get together through Kümmelmann’s help.