A Private Life on AllMovie

In an unspoken, cinematic tribute to accomplished actors that left Germany for political and religious reasons and wasted away in bit parts in New York or Hollywood, Russian director Mikhail Bogin casts two such people as the leads in this quiet and nostalgic romance. Karl (Paul Andor) is already elderly when he meets Margot (Lotte Palfi) in New York City, their adopted home. After establishing a bond through shared memories of art, music, and the stage and screen in their hometown of Berlin in the 1920s, their slowly budding romance is threatened when a well-meaning son tells Karl he has to leave New York to go live in a retirement home. Margot and Karl have not really had time to make their unacknowledged love official, and now it may be too late. This film was shown as part of a retrospective on the German actor Paul Andor (aka Wolfgang Zilzer) in Berlin in 1983.