Angst - Die schwache Stunde einer Frau

Henry Edwards and Eige Brink are married and love each other, but he's always working to get money for her and their child, which leaves her feeling neglected, as she explains to his husband's partner wife. She suggests that Fraulein Brink cultivate gentlemen friends. Miss Brink asks if doing so makes her happy.

The couple arrange for a vacation on the Riviera, but he has to stay home and work. So she gets involved with an artist. She wants to forget about it when she returns home, but he's obsessed with her -- though that soon vanishes. But a woman in the building threatens to tell her husband about the affair and blackmails her.

This movie based on a story by Stefan Zweig offers an almost stereotypical viewpoint of marriage: if you love each other, you're both constantly hostage to fears, while if you don't really care, like the second couple, you can be perfectly happy. The acting is very good, but alas, it goes on in an idiot-plotting way for far too long: if there weren't a secret, there wouldn't be a problem. While this terrible threat hangs over her head, Miss Brink is distant and silent, which is just the sort of thing to convince her husband that something is very wrong with their marriage.

I was impressed by Karl Puth's feather-light cinematography, wielding a camera that moves on a whim.