In 1913, in Russia, a widower hides from his daughter that he is a butler in a meeting restaurant. She meets a banker who is trying to seduce her and takes her to this restaurant. The father, knowing the decadent life of this client, immediately sends his daughter home. The pure love that her piano teacher devotes to her will allow the young girl to console herself for her disappointments...
Acting
Harry Baur's crushing dignity as the humiliated father.
Production
Lavish Tsarist-era sets that dwarf the human drama.
Director
Viktor Tourjansky
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Viktor Tourjansky fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution and made this in France as a nostalgic elegy for a destroyed world. The restaurant scenes were filmed at the actual Café de Paris.
Simone Simon became Hollywood's first major French import after this, then got typecast as exotic femmes fatales—a fate Tania narrowly escapes.
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