Julia, Du bist zauberhaft (1962)

Julia Lambert is a still highly successful, though no longer quite young, actress at a London theater. Her director and husband, Michael, is devoted to her, but their relationship has become a little stale. Julia considers seducing a family friend, Lord Charles Tamerly, but ultimately decides against it. Tom Fennel, the theater’s young tax adviser, falls in love with the diva and courts her—and she embarks on a passionate affair with him. Tom is poor, so Julia helps him out financially. But this very patronizing behavior cools the young man’s feelings. He is, incidentally, only a little older than Julia’s son Roger. Before long, he starts flirting with a young actress at the theater, who uses him to advance her career. Julia is not prepared to let a younger woman upstage her, either on stage or in her love life. So, though not without some reluctance, she first dumps her lover to save face, and at the premiere of her next play she mercilessly outshines the aspiring actress. Extremely pleased with this success, she goes incognito to a restaurant to indulge in a normally forbidden pleasure: a lavish meal, which she sums up with the words, “What is love compared with a beefsteak and fried potatoes!” There, her husband finds and speaks to her. He not only forgives her caprices, but also leads her back onto the path of virtue—or at least into the family fold.