Born in Russia, Victor Tourjansky was cosmopolitan : he made first movies in his native land ;when the revolution rove him away from his country , he worked in the US ,in Germany ,in Italy and in France.
In the thirties , he made a good adaptation of Maupassant 's short story "l'ordonnance" (1933) ; "volga en flammes" (1934) was an adventures movie ,but the French actors were miscast as Russians or Cossacks ;both "la peur" and "le mensonge de nina petrovna " were melodramas ,the latter being the best of the two.
At his best , "le mensonge " has an elegance which recalls Max Ophüls ;at his worst,it descends toward the banality of two-bit romance.
Two officers ,a captain and his lieutenant are a courtezan 's mistress.This woman ,a Russian adventuress,whose beauty makes all the men around turn their head,and can incite them to commit suicide: the "suicide" of the rejected suitor (a farce) echoes to another one (real and tragic).
Lie is the keyword : Nina lives (and dies) in untruthfulness ;she lies to the "official " lover who does not know he 's got a rival in the shape of his subordinate;she lies when she tells her real lover that a peaceful life in a house in the mountains is not what she longs for.
Brilliant dialogue by Henri Jeanson whose anti-militarism surfaces ("officers generally die at 90") ;a good cast with a stunningly attractive Isa Miranda , Fernand Gravey as her love interest and mischievous Paulette Dubost as a happy-go-lucky grisette fond of goulash.
