1920 was Asta Nielsen's most fruitful year, in which she acted in six films including two masterpieces: Hamlet and The Merry-Go-Round. Here, Nielsen teams with the great Conrad Veidt and Theodor Loos. The Ophulsian plot (à la La Ronde, or even Lola Montes) has Nielsen as a woman cast adrift in an amoral world, surviving only by attaching herself to one man after another. Veidt is a sinister cabaret pianist who seduces her, then when she marries a wealthy businessman, returns to haunt her. Nielsen is in her element as a woman who, at first naturally and unconsciously, then deliberately, charms every man she meets. "Never was Asta Nielsen more beautiful than in this film; never was her acting more controlled and her erotic charisma greater." (Marguerite Engberg)