Die Dame mit der Maske (1928)

Germany in the 1920s. The elderly Baron von Seefeld and his young, beautiful daughter Doris have lost everything because of hyperinflation and are now impoverished. Doris pawns her most valuable coat, and father and daughter also have to sell their elegant home. The new owner of the villa is Otto Hanke, a burly timber merchant and a textbook nouveau riche. To keep his young mistress, Kitty, a dancer, happy, he has invested in the Apollo Theater, where they are doing everything they can to make the largely talentless young woman a revue star. Doris von Seefeld is so desperate about her situation that she considers taking her own life by throwing herself into the water. In this state of mind, she meets Alexander von Illagin, a Russian exile who fled Bolshevik Russia for Germany. Once wealthy as a landowner in the Tsarist Empire, he is now impoverished like her and gets by as an extra at the Apollo Theater. Alexander advises Doris to try her luck at the Apollo too; perhaps they have a job for her there. She does just that. When Doris meets with the revue director, he immediately recognizes that she has talent—certainly much more than Kitty. Doris is to replace Kitty and become the next revue star in her place. But there is a catch: she is told she will have to perform scantily clad, if not almost completely naked. Outraged, the young woman initially rejects the proposal, with all the pride of her aristocratic upbringing. But then she considers the alternative, which would mean nothing good for her and her penniless father. So Doris accepts the offer, but on one condition: she asks to be allowed to wear a mask throughout her performances so that she will not be recognized and become the subject of gossip. Her request is granted. To make the expected windfall seem plausible to her father at home, Doris claims that she has placed his hunting-story manuscript—he writes as a hobby—with a publisher, and has found herself a job as a pianist. Since the boorish Hanke now finds the alluring, sensual Doris much more appealing than Kitty, he promptly drops his former girlfriend for the aristocratic young lady. But Doris is very coy and turns down all his invitations to meet privately. In response, Hanke, the revue troupe’s financier, simply invites the entire company to a convivial gathering at his villa. At midnight, the mysterious “Lady in the Mask” appears. But it is not Doris. Hanke then tries to put pressure on her, threatening to tell her father the whole truth about Doris’s real job. Doris eventually gives in, but prudently takes a revolver to the forced tête-à-tête. Sure enough, Otto Hanke makes unwanted advances, but with the gun in her hand, the young woman is able to keep the objectionable man at a distance. Like a whipped dog, Hanke returns to Kitty, whom he had so callously abandoned, while Doris wants to be with Alexander, her Russian exile, who has meanwhile managed to recover part of his fortune: valuable jewelry is found in his shoe sole, where a well-wisher had hidden it shortly before Alexander fled the newly established Soviet state.