Ein gewisser Herr Gran (1933)

Agents from an unspecified country attack an Italian engineer in order to obtain important, top-secret design plans for a strategically significant electromagnetic air-defense device. The machine is supposed to be able to stop aircraft engines from a great distance—a revolutionary invention for defending against bomber squadrons and aerial invasions. The engineer is killed in the attack. Unfortunately, there are no copies of the plans, so intelligence officer Captain Bergall is tasked with recovering them. To avoid attracting attention, he works undercover and henceforth goes by the name Gran. Under this name, he checks into the Hotel Danieli in Venice. There he meets Viola Dolleen, the blonde daughter of a wealthy shipowner. But the competition has already arrived too, in the form of Captain Gordon. He is also after the documents, but Gran initially manages to take him out of action with Viola’s help; Gordon has long had his eye on her. Thanks to a conversation he secretly overhears between a certain Mrs. Mervin and an Italian named Beppo, Gran learns that the two of them were responsible for the attack. The secret papers have been passed on to the art dealer Tschernikoff, who, in turn, intends to resell the design plans to his competitor, Gordon. While Gordon is out of the way, Gran wants to seize this opportunity. He goes to Tschernikoff’s art shop, Tizian, in Rome and passes himself off as Captain Gordon. But old Tschernikoff is a shrewd customer and doubts that this man really is Gordon. From Venice, he has been informed of the sudden arrival—and disappearance—of a certain Mr. Gran. The scene shifts. At Tschernikoff’s grand villa in a remote location, his much younger wife, Bianca, and the young painter Pietro Broccardo have embarked on a passionate affair. She has even posed nude for the gentle artist. When her husband returns, Pietro has to make the nude disappear in a hurry and quickly wraps it up so as not to arouse Tschernikoff’s suspicions. Gran’s appearance has made Tschernikoff uneasy. In a moment of inattention, he accidentally picks up the wrapped nude of Bianca instead of a portrait of his wife. The art dealer explains that he needs the portrait for an exhibition. As expected, however, it is not the portrait he is really concerned with, but the secret documents hidden behind the painting, which Tschernikoff now urgently wants taken out of the house and sold. But since the fence has taken the wrong picture, the design drawings are still in Tschernikoff’s villa. When Mr. Gran learns of this, he rushes into the house, where a fire suddenly breaks out, and saves the important documents from being consumed by the flames. He then explains himself to Viola, who had initially thought him a magician and later a crook and impostor, and the two plan to marry.