Summary
A crystalline Venetian mask, a sliver of chin, a flare of chandelier—Geraldine, heiress to a Fifth-Avenue dynasty, glides through the Austro-Hungarian Embassy as if she were the last un-catalogued species of swan. Count Carlos Kinski, whose bloodline is older than the Habsburg cracks in the ballroom mirrors, glimpses that half-profile and is felled by a thunderbolt older than either empire. Seven years of European exile have turned Geraldine’s stubbornness into a kind of secular religion; she boards the Neptune-bound liner in second-class, determined to shed privilege like a snake’s skin. On the fog-lashed deck she and the Count trade barbs over salt-stained deck quoits, unaware that Fraulein Handt—governess, archivist of tragedies, human paper-cut—is already threading the past through the eye of a needle. In New York’s gilded corrals the rumor metastasizes: Carlos’s phantom brother, a diplomatic rake, once drove an American girl to a Covent Garden suicide leap. Geraldine’s refusal to forgive becomes a liturgy; Carlos’s vineyard, carved into a Hungarian hillside, withers like a reprimand. Only when a sun-bleached dossier crosses the Atlantic—ink that absolves, stamps that sing—does the axis tilt. Geraldine finally unbuttons her pride; the peasants, drunk on the possibility that love might yet outwit history, fling paprika-dust into the air as the lovers disappear among the vines.
Synopsis
Geraldine, the daughter of a wealthy New Yorker, is in Hungary and about to return to the United States after an absence of seven years. As a farewell, a masked ball is given in her honor at the American Embassy. Count Carlos Kinski, a distinguished young nobleman, is one of the guests and catches a momentary glimpse of her face. He falls in love with her at once and tries in vain to ascertain her identity. In second cabin he makes the acquaintance of Geraldine during the voyage. Just when his wooing is most propitious, there comes a blow from the dark. His elder brother, while secretary to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in London, trifled with the affections of an American girl, then cast her off and she ended her life by leaping from a high balcony. Fraulein Handt, a governess to the daughters of the Ambassador, who are guests in Geraldine's home, rake up this story and charges it to Carlos. In the end, Carlos obtains the proof from Hungary that he is not the man who caused the tragedy in London. He then secures the money for his vineyard and the stubbornness of Geraldine wins. The happy pair are last seen among the adoring peasants.
Review Excerpt
"The film arrives like a letter you forgot you wrote to yourself—sealed with wax, smelling faintly of Danube mildew and Ritz-Carlton cigars. From the first iris-in on that embassy ballroom, director George Cowan weaponizes chiaroscuro as class warfare: diplomats in obsidian tailcoats swallow light while Geraldine’s pearl-sprayed gown ricochets it back, a refusal to be possessed. Laura Nelson Hall never lowers her eyelids—she lowers the temperature of the room. When her mask slips, the camera does..."
