Murnau's venture into the world of comic irony was greeted with delight by contemporary critics ("At last," wrote one, "a film without deeper significance"); certainly, it represents a trend in German cinema away from Expressionism and towards a realistic use of locations and actors. But Murnau scholars today allow as how comedy was not his strong suit. The story is a broad farce set in a small Mediterranean paradise where the Grand Duke, who luxuriates in a life of idleness for himself and his subjects, comes into conflict with a shady financier who wants to turn the place into a profitable sulphur mine. This reconstruction promises to allow audiences to see what critics writing in the 1960s could not, because of the poor quality of the available copy, namely, the care that Murnau put into the visual elements of even this minor film. According to Lotte Eisner, the script, written by Thea von Harbou, was based on a popular and typically anti-Semitic novel; "Murnau," she adds, "...always hated racism...(and) every trace of anti-Semitism has disappeared from the film version of the novel."