The ABC of Love
About The ABC of Love
Lis (Asta Nielsen) meets her fiancé Philip (Ludwig Trautmann) and is disappointed. She had pictured a dashing man and finds a shy one. She takes him to Paris to teach him how to move in the world, and she dresses as a man so she can go into the nightlife with him. Living as a man is harder than she expected. Then her father arrives without warning.
Cast & crew
More about The ABC of Love
Magnus Stifter directed and also appears in the cast. Released in Germany on August 16, 1916. Carl Ferdinand Fischer was the cameraman. The German title is Das Liebes-ABC. It was one of the films Asta Nielsen completed in 1916 for Neutral-Film, in the same group as Dora Brandes and Das Eskimobaby.
Themes
Background
It was released in Germany on August 16, 1916, in the middle of the First World War, from a comedy set in Paris.
Making
Nielsen carries the comedy in men's clothes, with Trautmann as the fiancé she is trying to remake and Stifter directing from inside the company.
Preservation
A print survives and is posted for viewing.
Notes
- The Danish Film Institute's silent-film note is the source of the Paris plot: a shy fiancé, a lesson in manhood, and a father who turns up.
- Stifter is both director and a member of the cast.
- Nielsen plays the cross-dressed Lis herself.
- The picture was already finished when payment disputes hit the rest of her 1916 Neutral-Film series.
Scenes
- Lis, dressed as a man, takes Philip out into the Paris night.
- Her father walks in unannounced.
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-das-liebes-abc)