This is a film which surprises both for its explicitly erotic atmosphere and for the cruelty of the situations – well distant from those which cinema was later to show us after the advent of the (self)censure codes. As an invitation to a viewing we shall anticipate the wicked initial caption which is attributed to Dumas: “A woman dies twice, the first time when white hairs appear ”.

“Maybe the name of Geza von Bolvary (Budapest 1897 – Altenbeuern 1961) can still rekindle in a few movie-goers tender memories of Viennese comedies, light and full of song, in which Willi Forst appeared, charming and captivating, elegant turn-of-the-century dandy, into whose arms at the end would fall a ‘gandige, schöne Frau’. And throughout the whole film there would unfailinging be Hans Moser, Theo Lingen and Paul Hörbinger to give flavour to these stories played out in the era of Franz Josef, the Radetzsky March and the Blue Danube.

There was also another Bolvary, totally unknown to us, from earlier years. Why did this former student of Budapest’s Military Academy, who had worked as a journalist and wrote several plays, start to be interested in cinema when just 20 years old in Hungary during the Republic of the Councils, a fertile time not least in the world of culture, a time which saw the involvement of many other young people his own age, such as Alexander Korda or Mihály Kertész?

But Bela Kuhn’s project lasted only a few months and Bolvary who, unlike his colleagues remained in his country, soon put aside his ideas for a revolutionary cinema and started directing less ambitious movies, but movies that were illuminated by the smile of his beatiful wife, Ilona Mattyasovszky (1895-1943). […]

In 1923 Bolvary, whose output never exceeded five or six films a year, left Hungary and moved to Munich, where he had to start again from scratch. At first he wrote scripts, then directed several minor movies; one set in the desert (Wüsternrausch), recreated on the edge of the Black Forest.

Also for Bavaria Flimkunst, he tried his hand at “Ein Bild aus seiner Zeit” with Mädchen, die man nicht heiraten, the story of a prostitute which did not please the censors. The following year, 1925, Bolvary made, also in Munich but this time for Ewe-Film, a similar work, Frauen, die vom Weg abirren. Also here the censor intervened – the title was changed to Frauen, die nicht lieben dürfen, and again the censor’s certificate was denied. A copy of the film, however, has miraculously survived and has been found recently in the Film Archives of Lausanne. It tells the story of Yvonne, a humble seamstress who, fascinated by a life of luxury offered to her by a rogue, cames close to suicide, but is saved at the last moment by the sincere suitor she had jilted earlier: the story is told with a keen eye to the reality of life lived in those years and is cloaked in pervasive eroticism.

At the end of the silent era Bolvary also directed several comedies co-produced with Great Britain with highly popular leading actors and actresses of the time such as Betty Balfour and Ivor Novello.

The success of these films, which were commercial but not contemptible, made his reputation as a craftman worthy of respect and gave him the chance to direct several early talkies.

But from 1923 onwards Bolvary was no longer in a position to put forward such extravagant story lines and costume satires. Instead, with the sweetness and lightness of touch of the “unsterbliches” waltzes, he turned to tales of “Wiener Geschichten”, “Schwarzwald Melodie”, the perfume of Tyrolean roses and the celebrations of the Hapsburg revival in Opernball.

(Vittorio Martinelli, Cinegrafie, VI, n.9, 1996)