The object of the study is Yuriy Arabov's literary script “Mister Designer” (1988), based on Alexander Green's story “The Gray Car” (1925). The methodological basis of the study is the book of N. Y. Berkovsky “Romanticism in Germany”, which includes the characterization of Hoffmann’s writings. The article proves the closeness of the artistic world outlook of the Soviet writer and German romantic writer. It is devoted to analysis of the commons motives in works of Soviet screenwriter and German romanticist: impossibility of an unambiguous interpretation of the plot, images of demiurge artists who come into conflict with their environment, image of the mechanical Galatea, threatening his Pygmalion, protagonists’ ambiguous moral position, love of the mechanical puppet, motive of double and motive of mechanizing life and art, theme of music, “art of creation the atmosphere”, rapprochement with visual arts. The romantic interpretation of the image of a mechanical doll turned out to be congenial to the views of the artists of the Silver Age, to which Yuriy Arabov appeals in his script “Mister Designer”: the culture of this time mastered the image of a puppet-machine and with it the dual attitude to it. Saturating the text with literary and theatrical codes, like Hoffmann, Yuriy Arabov strives to create an artificial atmosphere. The comparison of Arabov’s literary scenario “Mister Designer” with the texts by Hoffmann (“Don Juan”, “Automated machines”, “The Golden Pot”, “Sandman”, “Little Zaches called Cinnabar”) clarifies the intention of the screenwriter to stylize the culture of the Silver Age, as he refers to one of the its origins – romanticism in its German version.