Der Herr im Haus (1940)

The story is set in an apartment building in Vienna. The widowed court singer Schellenberg lives there with his daughter Christa and would like to marry her off to his neighbor, the private scholar Menarek. He is fascinated by Menarek’s supposed supernatural abilities: at an evening gathering, Menarek demonstrates telepathy and “séances,” which are nothing but a scam. The building manager, Sixtus Bader, who lives on the ground floor, helps out as a butler at the gathering and sees through the trick: he watches Menarek switch Countess von Schwarzendorff’s valuable pearl necklace for an imitation during his performance. Bader already dislikes Menarek, who is also behind on his rent, so he considers how to expose him and get him out of the building. On the top floor lives Klaus Frank, an aspiring singer who is also in rent arrears because his art has not yet provided him with a living. Christa and Klaus are secretly in love, and she takes singing lessons from him. When Menarek promises to summon the ghost of Napoleon soon, Bader sees a chance to bring the young couple together and get rid of Menarek: during the séance, Bader appears in a Napoleon costume, slaps Menarek, and disappears again. Soon afterward, Schellenberg attends a dress rehearsal at the opera, and Bader appears onstage in the same costume. Schellenberg realizes he has been deceived and no longer stands in the way of Christa and Klaus’s happiness. Menarek, who has swindled a large sum of money out of Schellenberg and now intends to leave without paying his rent, is stopped at the last moment and arrested by the police.