Schlußakkord (aka The Final Chord) (1936)

After abandoning her child to go to America, a widow (Maria Tasnadi Fekete) returns to Germany to seek out her son (Peter Bosse) who has been adopted by a famous conductor (Willy Birgel) and his adulterous wife (Lil Dagover). She secures a position as the child's nanny in the household. Co-written and directed by Douglas Sirk (ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), the movie echoes the themes of mother love and adultery in the world of classical music that Sirk would later revisit in IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) and INTERLUDE (1957) during his Hollywood years. Sirk expertly guides the melodrama through its emotional ups and downs but surprisingly I didn't find much sympathy for the biological mother as I found her justification unconvincing. Given a choice between abandoning a husband or abandoning a child, would a mother really choose a husband over her child? I felt more sympathy for the adulterous wife whose husband gives his career more attention than her and the angst she's put through by her blackmailer. Still, all in all, highly watchable. With Maria Koppenhoffer, Kurt Meisel and Albert Lippert.