''Roswolsky's Mistress'' () is a 1921 German silent

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Felix Basch Felix Basch (1885–1944) was an American-Austrian actor, screenwriter and film director. He first acted in Vienna, and he was a producer and director for the German film production company U. F. A. Following the Nazi takeover of power in Germ ...

and starring

Asta Nielsen Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen (11 September 1881 – 24 May 1972) was a Danish silent film actress who was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international movie stars. Seventy of Nielsen's 74 films were ...

Paul Wegener Paul Wegener (11 December 1874 – 13 September 1948) was a German actor, writer, and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema. Acting career At the age of 20, Wegener decided to end his law studies and conce ...

, and

Wilhelm Diegelmann Wilhelm Diegelmann (28 September 1861 – 1 March 1934) was a German actor. Career Diegelmann's first stage appearance was in 1878 in the chorus for the Frankfurt Opera. In 1881 he debuted at the Frankfurt City Theater, playing King Lear, Wil ...

. It was based on a novel by George Froeschel. The film was shot at the

Tempelhof Studios The Tempelhof Studios are a film studio located in Tempelhof in the German capital of Berlin. They were founded in 1912, during the silent era, by German film pioneer Alfred Duskes, who built a glass-roofed studio on the site with financial back ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, with sets designed by

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

Robert Neppach Robert Neppach (2 March 1890 – 18 August 1939) was an Austrian architect, film producer and art director. Neppach worked from 1919 in the German film industry. He oversaw the art direction of over 80 films during his career, including F.W. Mur ...

and Jack Winter. According to one estimate, the star Asta Nielsen wore thirty six different

costume Costume is the distinctive style of dress and/or makeup of an individual or group that reflects class, gender, occupation, ethnicity, nationality, activity or epoch—in short, culture. The term also was traditionally used to describe typica ...

s during the course of the film.

Plot

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

girl is mistakenly believed to have become the mistress of a

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

. The mistaken belief attracts fame and fortune for her.

Cast

as Mary Verhag *

as Eugen Roswolsky *

as secretary *

Ferdinand von Alten Ferdinand von Alten (born Baron von Lamezan auf Altenhofen; 13 April 1885 – 16 March 1933) was a Russian-German actor. Selected filmography * '' The Blue Lantern'' (1918) * '' Madame Récamier'' (1920) * '' Anna Boleyn'' (1920) * ''Catherine t ...

as Lico Mussafin *Marga von Kierska as Fernande Raway *

Guido Herzfeld Guido Herzfeld (born Guido Kornfeld; 14 August 1851 – 16 November 1923) was a German stage and film actor. Herzfeld established himself in the theatre in the nineteenth century. In 1914 he made his film debut and went on to appear in over sixty ...

as Flügelmann, moneylender *

Arnold Korff Arnold Peter Kirsch-Korff (2 August 1870 – 2 June 1944) was an Austrian-born American Hollywood actor and director. He appeared in a number of German and Austrian films before moving to the United States and resuming his career in America. He m ...

as coroner *Carl Bayer as jeweller *

Adolphe Engers Adolphe Engers (1884–1945) was a Dutch writer and actor on stage and in the movies, who appeared in more than fifty films during his career, a number of them in Weimar Germany. Biography Before his career in film, he was an actor on the stage a ...

as Jean Meyer *

Ernst Gronau Ernst Gronau (21 August 1887 – 10 August 1938) was a German actor and writer. Selected filmography * ''Prostitution'' (1919) * '' Genuine'' (1920) * '' Roswolsky's Mistress'' (1921) * '' The Graveyard of the Living'' (1921) * ''Miss Julie'' ( ...

as Layton *

Max Landa Max Landa (; 24 April 1873 – 8 November 1933; born Max Landau) was a Russian-born Austrian silent film and stage actor. Career Landa attended the Handelsakademie (commercial academy) in Vienna and took classes with acting teacher in the same ...

as Baron Albich * Adolf E. Licho as theater director *Maria Peterson as room landlord *

Emil Rameau Emil Rameau (born Emil Pulvermacher; 13 August 1878 – 9 September 1957) was a German film and theatre actor, and for many years the deputy artistic director at the Schiller Theater. He appeared in nearly 100 films between 1915 and 1949. Lif ...

as bandmaster *

Gertrud Wolle Gertrud Wolle (11 March 1891 – 6 July 1952) was a German film actress. Selected filmography * ''Die Insel der Glücklichen'' (1919) * ''Prince Cuckoo'' (1919) * '' Roswolsky's Mistress'' (1921) * '' A Glass of Water'' (1923) * ''Burglars'' ( ...

as Martha Verhag, Sister von Mary

References

Bibliography

External links

* Films of the Weimar Republic German silent feature films Films directed by Felix Basch 1921 drama films Films based on Austrian novels UFA GmbH films Films shot at Tempelhof Studios German black-and-white films Silent German drama films 1920s German films 1920s German-language films German-language drama films {{1920s-Germany-silent-drama-film-stub