After Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer meets Christine at the opera, the two quickly fall in love. Lobheimer is already having an affair with the married Baroness Eggerdorff, and though he tries to end the affair, Baron Eggerdorff soon finds out about their secret and challenges Lobheimer to a duel.

Before melancholic romantic Max Ophüls became a great itinerant director, making such classics as Letter from an Unknown Woman and La Ronde in different countries, he worked in his native Germany. That is, before the Nazis suppressed this richly tragic, densely romantic tale, recently resurrected.