A Woman of Experience

It's World War 1 and Helen Twelvetrees (Elsa) is a prostitute who wants to serve her country - Austria - against the Allies. She offers herself as a nurse but is rejected on the grounds of her profession. However, her trade does qualify her to become a spy and lure men into giving her secrets. Her first target is Captain Lew Cody (Otto) who is suspected of passing on secrets. However, she's not very good at being a spy and decides to bunk off and carry on a love affair with a man from the Navy William Bakewell (Karl) instead. Duty or romance? Which is it to be?

This is not so much a spy film as a romance. That loses marks for me as I felt we could have been drawn in by a more interesting story regarding the betrayals and tactics employed. A better spy film from the same year is "Dishonored" starring Marlene Dietrich, also as an Austrian prostitute-turned-spy.

Something that annoyed me in this film was Bakewell's pronunciation of the name Elsa. It's Elsa with an "s". It's not Elza with a "z". My mother was called Elsa and this really bugged me. Lose a mark.

The film has a weird ending and I don't agree with the implied course that the film takes but Twelvetrees does carry the film.