Was eine Frau im Frühling träumt (1959)

Elisabeth Brandt has been married for 20 years to Johannes, a toy manufacturer who has always considered work more important than his family. Even their honeymoon had to be postponed because of business appointments, and in the end it never happened. Now Johannes misses his daughter Helga’s return home because of business negotiations with the Japanese. She has spent two years living in Switzerland. Helga wanted to become a painter, but while away she changed her mind. The young woman, considered spoiled and ill-mannered, now wants to become a writer and adopts the pen name “Therese Fanal.” It is Helga’s birthday, so Johannes plans a big celebration at his house and invites his employee Fritz Bergstedt as well. Johannes’s secretaries have already warned Fritz about Helga, and he plans to buy her a portfolio for her birthday. At the shop, he meets Helga, whom he has never seen before, and takes an interest in her. When he hears her enthusing about writers, he pretends to be an author named “Victor Molinar,” while she introduces herself as “Therese Fanal.” Neither of them turns up at the birthday party: Fritz claims he has to leave for Paris. But apparently he stays in town only for “Therese.” Helga is delighted, but soon learns that the real Victor Molinar has been dead for many years. Fritz admits that he is merely an employee of the Brandt company. Helga is about to confess that she is his boss’s daughter, but he starts disparaging his superior’s “spoiled daughter,” so she walks away, though she hints that she knows Johannes well and owes him a great deal. Meanwhile, Johannes promises his dissatisfied wife that he will take her to Konstanz for two weeks on their long-delayed honeymoon, but then asks her to go ahead without him because he has to travel to Zurich on business. Elisabeth goes to Konstanz alone, while Johannes flies to Zurich with Helga. During her trip, Elisabeth makes a detour to Mainau Island, where she unexpectedly runs into Pierre Bonvant, her great love from her youth, who is a violinist. He is in a relationship with the singer Madeleine, but suffers from her justified jealousy. He therefore spends the evening with Elisabeth, who enjoys having a man put work aside for her. Johannes, meanwhile, postpones his arrival in Konstanz until the next day because his business partners will not arrive in Zurich until then either. Elisabeth finds out and decides to spend the night on Mainau Island. But her time with Pierre does not go as planned: although he tries to get closer to her in a boat on Lake Constance, she remains faithful to Johannes. They do not get back to shore until the following morning, however, because the motorboat will not start again. By then Johannes has already arrived in Konstanz, since Fritz has unexpectedly turned up in Zurich, jealous, to rescue “Therese” from Johannes. The deception is cleared up, and Fritz takes over the negotiations in Zurich. Johannes eventually waits for his wife, jealous, while she soon comes to believe, because of a series of misunderstandings, that Johannes is having an affair with Madeleine. In the end, the two couples make up, and Fritz and Helga, whose relationship goes through several twists and turns, become a couple too. Johannes also realizes that his factory can run without him: his young son Rudi has managed to sell one of his own inventions to the Japanese and, with his grandmother’s help, is also marketing it worldwide on his own.