A well directed, well written and sad film like this calls to mind the works of Max Ophüls and Stefan Zweig, it's the same kind of deep melancholy pervading the whole work, giving it a dimension of bottomless despair. Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel" bringing Marlene Dietrich to Hollywood also comes to mind, it's the same kind of story, an accomplished master in his field is brought down by his own strange fascination with a cheap nightclub dancer, who actually originally is intent on bringing him down and sabotaging his concert, but instead she gets a kick out of his fantastic Chopin interpretations although she understands nothing about classical music, and he commits the mistake of taking her seriously and falling for her, making of himself a self-destructive idiot. Of course he is foolish, getting carried away by his jealousy of a woman who could be his daughter, but he just can't help it, and Hugo Haas makes a very convincing character of a great man at a loss against his own weakness. Almost all Hugo Haas' films have the character of a sad pathetic self-revelation and self-confession, and here he plays the lead in his own film of such a case. It is extremely sympathetic in all its pathetic deplorability, but the case is saved by the fact that he actually keeps smiling. And the music, like in all Haas' films, is absolutely exquisite in its blend of the highest quality and the lowest vulgarity.