Prinzessin Olala (1928)

Prince Boris, son of the ruler of an operetta-like small-state monarchy, is to be married at all costs, as his father insists. At 25, he is still a complete blank when it comes to the opposite sex and has so far been infatuated only with music. To prepare him for his marital duties, his father sends his still rather inexperienced son to Paris, with the princely chamberlain at his side as a paternal chaperone, to attend Madame Chichotte de Gastoné’s “school of love,” known in the relevant circles simply as “Olala.” Boris is also supposed to meet his future bride, Princess Xenia, while he is there. The two letters the old prince sends to the two women in Paris for this very purpose are switched, and a series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities begins. Princess Xenia asks Chichotte to let her play “Olala,” while Chichotte is to play Boris’s high-born future bride. In this way, Xenia, now “Princess Olala,” hopes to get to know her future husband in a completely unguarded and genuine way. But soon something happens that nobody had planned or wanted: Boris falls in love with the wrong princess—and thus with the real Olala, namely Chichotte. This is not at all to the liking of her lover, René, a shady dandy and crook. More complications follow: Boris is briefly arrested over a jewelry theft that René had actually committed. Eventually, Prince Boris is able to take home the princess who was intended for him.