Frederica

When Gräfin Mariza visits her country estate it is certainly an event. She gives a party to celebrate her engagement to a certain Koloman Zsupan, who unexpectedly shows up. Her authoritarian ways collide with Török, her manager. Based on Emerich Kálmán operetta.

Mr. and Mrs. Linsemann have been happily married for a year. In their chic home, a modern villa financed by a loan and not yet fully paid off, the lady of the house intends to throw a big one-year anniversary party to please her husband. For this reason, she invites all his relatives to a large party, including her wealthy Uncle Adolf, from whom she hopes for a substantial financial boost to help pay off the loan. But this bash soon turns into a disaster, because the guests are quite a handful: there's dear, well-behaved Uncle Emil, who was always under the thumb of his rather unpleasant brother Adolf; the Webers with their teenage son; Cousin Wilhelm and his wife; and Mr. and Mrs. Stempel. A musician, a nanny, and a singer are also in attendance.

An impoverished nobleman would rather chase after the local milkmaid than seek a wealthy match, to the chagrin of his family.

This movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.