Impossible Love

The sound film made its debut in Germany in 1929, but Asta Nielsen was reluctant to try the medium, feeling that the stage rather than the screen was the place for theatrical dialogue. In 1932, however, she agreed to play the role of Vera Holgh in Impossible Love. According to [her autobiography] The Silent Muse, the original novel dealt with a middle-aged woman artist who falls in love with an elderly sculptor, marries him, and lives happily. In the film version the sculptor became a young man with a deranged wife, and the ‘impossible love’ ended tragically. Once bitten, twice shy: Asta Nielsen retired from films. —R. C. Allan, Sight & Sound