Typically sudsy, romantic melodrama from Douglas Sirk (Detlef Sierck at the time) has all the expected ingredients for three-hankie nirvana: runaway mom returning from America to seek the baby boy she left behind; rich adoptive parents unknowingly hiring her as nanny; their crumbling marriage (she: hot for a seductive astrologist/he: finding a soul-mate in the pretty young nanny); an overly possessive housekeeper with a yen for her mistress; murder thru medical overdose; the works, yet it never quite emulsifies into a storyline you can buy into, bumping along point-by-point and shot-by-shot. A classical music backdrop adds interest, with Lil Dagover’s older wife reveling in empty high society & gossip, while husband/conductor Willy Birgel yearns for spiritual fulfillment thru Beethoven's Ninth with nanny/birth mother Mária Tasnádi Fekete. There’s a neat opening montage, a jazz party back in America that might have come from Ernst Lubitch’s SO THIS IS PARIS/’26, but much feels unpolished for Sirk, with far too many narrative shortcuts. Even in Nazi Germany both parents had to at least meet the child before adoption, ya? And Mária’s sponsors setting her up as nanny to her own son? Really? With Sirk at his best, the sense of personal identification can become overwhelming in even the most unlikely scenarios; here it’s just unlikely.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The remarkable Lil Dagover, tearing into her villainy with an appetite Bette Davis might envy, also led the way for older woman holding on to their sexual allure; she’s 49 pushing 50, not that you’d know it.
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