T a very original story - even on that day, I have watched an 'influencing' plot line in A Bed Time Story (1930) and probably there could be some even earlier than that...
In brief, a rich playboy get mixed up with a.... baby who is believed, even by him, to be his son and his reformation, once he is a papa, and the romantic interest, and new mama of the kid would be naturally the hired (and very young) nanny of the kid.
There are minor differences in the two - and that comes in in the middle itself, so this is no spoiler. Unlike in the Bedtime story - in this case the kid is really his son, and the nanny is - well not his wife, but the kids mother. Hiding the relationship, and reforming him, and making him fall in love with her is the crux of the matter.
In the two - my personal bias would tilt it in favour of Ruhmann (in this movie) against Chevalier (in the other), and that would seal it - since the movie moves around the new father, the romantic other gender lead (Carola Höhn vs Helen Twelvetrees) have lesser scope - but here too, the first one scores, due to more restrained acting.
The movie is quite enjoyable - and scores on this point a few points more than the others, especially in Carola's igniting jealousy in Peter (Ruhmann) - by exposure of her 'affair' - though by accident, but expertly using it to her advantage.
But there has been a very weak point, which could have been re-programmed. This was in bringing in (the world) the baby. Margaret (Carola)'s version was - it was in masked carnival which created the baby. Well there had been so many movies with one-night stands with this same result, so I won't go into that, but the masked carnival aspect is a bit too unbelievable. Not only the non-unmasking in the bed, but also, the playboys of his type (as depicted), would be more on charming the women in submission (his lot of faithful girlfriends and ex-girlfriends were a symbol of it), which could be a few day's affair, at least, and by then she would be unmasked. This could have been better 'plotted' - with plausible explanation of his not recognizing the mother - even the factor that she was 'underage' at that time could have been stressed, since there could be lot of feature changes in an underage girl to a girl in twenties, and in a short conquest, one might forget one of many such. Second thing that bothered me was - and this was easily rectifiable - the child recognizing some other women as mother - the rectification could have been by brainwashing the kid by the father that "We are going to meet your mother, who have deserted you" and the third weakness was the kid not recognizing his 'aunt'/mother who had adopted him back from the orphanage as an aunt, once she came to age. But all these are for fault finders like me. Otherwise, I could successfully watch the movie in one sitting - and that is good enough excuse to give it stars - probably the greater part of the credit goes to Ruhmann.
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