Fred von Wellingen is forced by his family into an arranged marriage with an older woman he doesn’t love. To avoid the marriage he decides to create a scandal by getting engaged to a girl working in a nightclub.

Ihre Majestät die Liebe is not representative of Joe May’s style, even though it is difficult to categorize his work according to one specific style. May’s first talking picture is an extremely colourful mixture of genres including popular opera, social comedy, romantic drama, musical and the grotesque: a veritable juggler’s act that boldly manages to keep all the balls perfectly up in the air. The carefree way in which the different genres are mixed and the way in which first-rate theatre plays follow one another must have confused the critics of the period. Today such a carefree attitude would be appreciated for its lightness of touch. “It’s a story that has probably been seen a thousand times…but what a result! A sure fire gag every 50 metres of film” (“Der Kinematograph”, 8, 1931).

Matias Bleckman, in Joe May. Regisseur und Produzent, edited by Hans-Michael Bock and Claudia Lenssen, München 1991