By Candlelight

Josef, a prince's valet, has watched and memorised his master's arrangements with women for years. While the prince is away he presents himself as one and courts a woman. She is not who she appears to be either. The film is not interested in love. It is interested in how transferable a role is: it tells us early that both sides are in disguise and hangs its tension on who will work it out first. Nobody is loved as the person they actually are. The form is European drawing-room comedy: a sleeping car, a hotel suite, champagne and doorway scenes. The kind of light humour Universal was importing from the continent at the time. James Whale directed. In the same years he was making Frankenstein and The Invisible Man; this is an entirely different piece from that stretch and shows what he could do outside horror. The source is a play by Siegfried Geyer. Elissa Landi, Paul Lukas and Nils Asther star. Who it is for: viewers who like thirties Hollywood drawing-room comedy and are curious about the lesser-known Whale. Who it is not for: anyone after surprise. The mistaken-identity game is far too familiar now, and even at seventy minutes the film drags in places.