Mazurka

A woman is on trial for murder. The man she killed was a musician. Years earlier he had wrecked her marriage. The trial is the spine of the film. She will not defend herself. She insists on staying silent. The past opens up slowly in the courtroom. At the start of the story there is a young music student. A famous pianist takes an interest in her. Just as she is about to fall for him, he is shot. Nobody in the room knows the woman who fired. The night everything rests on lies years further back. She was sexually assaulted that night and her life came apart. The film says this without going into detail. Pola Negri plays the cabaret singer Vera Petrova. Pola Negri and Albrecht Schoenhals appear in the ninety one minute film, a German production Willi Forst finished in 1935.