The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna

Nina Petrovna lives comfortably in Russia. She is the mistress of a colonel in the Tsar’s army. Money is not a worry for her. Then she meets a young lieutenant. He has nothing. The two of them fall for each other. Nina means to stay with the colonel. The lieutenant wants no trouble with his fellow officers. Neither of them can give the thing up. What follows is heavy. The title points at a lie told at the turning point of the story. The film was made at the very end of the silent era, with an original score by Maurice Jaubert that Carlo Piccardi later rebuilt from what survived, and it was shown again in Paris in 1988. Brigitte Helm and Francis Lederer take the leads in the eighty minute film, a German production Hanns Schwarz finished in 1929.