The Mysterious Lady
About The Mysterious Lady
In Vienna, Austrian captain Karl von Raden shares an opera box with a woman who spends the next day with him. His uncle, Colonel Eric von Raden, tells him she is the Russian spy Tania Fedorova and sends him to Berlin with secret plans. Tania boards the train. By morning the plans are gone, and Karl is court-martialed. The colonel frees him to go to Warsaw as a Serbian pianist. At General Boris Alexandroff's house Tania recognizes Karl's tune and does not expose him. She passes him papers that turn out to be blanks. She shoots Alexandroff, and she and Karl leave with the real documents and marry.
Cast & crew
More about The Mysterious Lady
Fred Niblo directed and produced. Bess Meredyth wrote the screenplay from Ludwig Wolff's 1915 novel War in the Dark. Marian Ainslee and Ruth Cummings wrote the titles. Margaret Booth edited. The Eddie Mannix ledger records worldwide rentals of $1,084,000 and a profit of $369,000. Wikipedia splits the rentals as $543,000 in the United States and $541,000 elsewhere. The budget figure is the one Alexander Walker prints.
Themes
Background
The story is set in Vienna, on a train to Berlin, and in Warsaw during the First World War, with Austrian and Russian intelligence after the same papers.
Notes
- Greta Garbo plays Tania Fedorova, Conrad Nagel plays Karl, and Gustav von Seyffertitz plays General Boris Alexandroff.
- Edward Connelly plays Colonel Eric von Raden. Albert Pollet plays the traitor Max Heinrich.
- A DVD commentary by Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta identifies Betty Blythe, uncredited, as the opera singer.
- The British running time on the Wikipedia infobox is 96 minutes.
- Warner Home Video put the film in the 2005 Garbo Silents Collection, with a score by Vivek Maddala.
Scenes
- Karl buys a returned opera ticket and finds Tania in the box.
- Tania steals what she thinks are the latest secrets and finds blank paper.
- She shoots Alexandroff during her birthday ball and leaves with Karl.
Influenced by
- War in the Dark (novel)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Mysterious Lady (1928).webm)
- Warner Home Video DVD (The Garbo Silents Collection, 2005)
