Das gefährliche Alter (1927)

As in many of her late silent films, Asta Nielsen here too plays a woman of advanced age, marked by loneliness and age-related insecurity, who feels that life has passed her by. Elsie Lindtner has been leading a quiet, uneventful married life with the respected university professor Richard Lindtner for nearly two decades. Yet she feels an inner emptiness—the fear that this is all there is. She longs for a way out of her well-worn routine, searches for meaning in the years she has left, for a new thrill in life. And she is terribly afraid of growing old. One day she meets Jürgen Malthe, a student of her husband’s who is considerably younger than she is. In him, she sees everything she longs for: youth, freshness, and adventure! He becomes the blueprint for a new life. And so Elsie Lindtner, a woman at the dangerous age when one believes there is not much left to lose, takes the risk: the risk of an affair. The young man does her good; he is like a fountain of youth, even though Elsie has always disapproved of her various contemporaries’ little escapes into the arms of younger men, those somewhat stale, temporary love affairs. Elsie’s fear of it being too late is this: to try for love once more before it is finally too late. Since Jürgen, too, falls for her, the risk seems justified to her. But Elsie soon has to admit that youth alone is no guarantee of happiness. Rather, it becomes clear that the age difference between the two temporary lovers, and its consequences, are too significant for a lasting relationship to be built on them. Although Elsie pushes him away, Jürgen does not give up his pursuit of her. They get back together, but only when Elsie observes the infatuated love Jürgen’s fellow student Magda Rothe has for him does she know for certain: her relationship with Jürgen has no future. Once the first rush of love has passed, at the latest, the illusion of finding new happiness in old age will burst like a soap bubble. Elsie leaves for good—away from Jürgen, away from the belief in a new beginning that will make her forget her age, and away from her old life as well. She withdraws like a hermit to her house by the sea. Then, one day, her former husband appears, and in his behavior she recognizes how much love he still has for her. He offers her a helping hand in every way, caring and loving, and Elsie admits to herself that it was a grave mistake to undervalue and ultimately throw away their old familiarity and cherished routine for the sake of an adventurous flirtation. Professor Lindtner, however, has long since forgiven his wife, and Elsie is grateful that, under the circumstances, he wants to take her back. Elsie, the woman at the dangerous age, now knows what she has in her husband and returns to his life.