Acting
The focus of the story is on the relation between the femme fatale and an escaped prisoner, who manages to save himself from the clutches of the vamp in the very last minute (no spoiler, the end of the film is missing!). A dream reveals to him the real nature of duchess Leda Orlonia/geisha/marchesa Rochefou, and he decides to leave the ‘woman with the many names’ for a kind-hearted and decent American girl.
Ruritanian power struggle with opera singing.
Based on the operetta of the same name.
The quarrel between the waltz king Joseph Lanner and his still unknown violinist Johann Strauss. It comes to a break. Strauss is engaged in London and has his first successes there. Thanks to the initially unfortunate intervention of Lanner's daughter, a reconciliation is finally achieved.
In the very old-fashioned town of Ostend suddenly 13 suitcases are delivered to the Grand Hotel, with a note, that O.F. will be here soon and needs 6 rooms. This event, probably the biggest in 300 years, starts a small wave of modernisation, yet everybody is wondering who O.F. is.
In the depression era unemployed Susanne tries to break into movies by working as an extra. She is ‚hired' to be kidnapped in a PR stunt that is supposed to hush over a suicide scandal. This soon gets her a real role in an artistic film.
Harry Piel plays Harry Peel who receives an urgent telephone call from a friend who has returned from South America recently. The call is being made from the circus "Beely" and our hero arrives there too late to prevent the murder of his friend. Now Harry must find his friend's killer and go on a strange mission involving a hidden document.
