Home movies? Sirk in Germany 1934-35, Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-rays

 

Douglas Sirk is best known for his lavish Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s such as Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955) – both featuring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman – up to Imitation of Life (1959) with Lana Turner and John Gavin. In 1955 he went to Ireland to film Captain Lightfoot with Hudson and it is here that he directed my Uncle Mike Nolan who played Willie the Goat! It’s an under-rated film but perhaps one for another day… Rock did give Mike a bracelet which he then gave to our Thelma though.

 

Born Hans Detlef Sierck in 1897 Sirk made a number of films in his native Germany before leaving in 1937 unable to risk the persecution of his Jewish wife. This set highlights three features all of which foreshadow the above later work with romantic tales that deal with clashes of cultures, the differing worlds of the rich and poor, the morally superior and “inferior”, royalty and new money. In these films people move in different circles and there’s plenty of social commentary as individuals connect in transgressive ways. The Power of Love but so much more.

 

I had to start with The Girl from Marsh Croft (Das Mädchen vom Moorhof) (1935) as it is based on Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf’s novella from 1908 which was first adapted for film by Victor Sjöström in 1917 starring Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth. The author was pleased with the outcome – she was by no means easily convinced – but I don’t know how she viewed this version. For me, it’s an equally good reading of the story with the focus on the moral strength of the titular character and the Christian faith and boggy myths that inform her thinking.

 

Helga Christmann is a wonderful creation here played by Hansi Knoteck who gives a performance of remarkable stillness and expressive tone, she had trained in ballet and her physicality is an important part of her impression here. She plays a lowly farm girl from the marshy edges of the community who has a child following an affair with the married farmer who employed her, Marten (Carl Jönsson). Driven by circumstance as well as morality she takes him to court for income support only to withdraw her claim to prevent him perjuring himself by swearing on the bible.

 

The judge shakes her hand, recognising her moral courage and she also impresses Karsten Dittmar (Kurt Fischer-Fehling) who subsequently gets her employment at his family farm after following her to the Marsh Croft as she contemplates her mortality. Sirk is in no doubt as to where our sympathies should be and he also presents the film with the lyrical beauty often found in Lagerlöf’s work. Soon Karsten is engaged to Gertrud Gerhart (Ellen Frank) from the richest farm in the area and she sees Helga as a threat but the rarest of Helga’s qualities is that she always does the right thing and what she feels she must do for everyone else, even at a cost to herself.

 

She is the most morally consistent character and whilst other’s learn from their mistakes as they go they eventually learn from her too. In his commentary Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove points out that in Sweden even working women such as Helga would have been educated enough to stand firm at this point but less so in the Germany Sirk relocated the story too but that only makes Helga more remarkable and I’m sure Selma would have agreed.

 

Some have described the film as a prototypical Heimatfilm which would place it firmly among the rural tales of nuclear family favoured by the Nazis and other extremists but whilst Wingrove brushes this aside I would agree given the still challenging nature if Helga’s situations; she’s a single mother with agency who follows her God and conscience first and foremost. To date the story has been made into seven films so the resonance is way beyond German nationalism and Selma’s proto-feminism drives the appeal.

 

Far from portraying a rural idyll, Sirk depicts an almost noirish view of the countryside, inhabited by proud, superstitious and reserved folk living in medieval dwellings and according to unforgiving social norms.

Tim Bergfelder, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Southampton – booklet essay.

  

Sirk’s first feature April! April! (1934) the German announcement for April Fool!  is an altogether different being a comedy of manners, deference, pasta manufacture and royalty with a surprisingly common touch… It too deals with behaviours of sectors of society and, in this case the hubris of the nouveau rich. Julius Lampe (Erhard Siedel) is a self-made pasta magnet whose product has bought him wealth and an arrogant assurance. Along with his wife, Mathilde (Lina Carstens) he hosts extravagant social occasions in which the gathered people of means must endure their ceaseless boasting.

 

One friend, Finke (Paul Westermeier) decides to teach them a lesson and sends them a letter supposedly from the Prince von Holsten-Böhlau, placing a large order for Lampe's noodles to take on an African expedition. The Lampes cannot contain their glee and read the good news out to the gathered throng forcing Finke to double down and pretending to be the Prince’s PA, phone up to arrange a visit to their factory.

 

Now things get complicated as Lampes discovers the deception but cannot lose face so arranges for a man named Müller (Hubert von Meyerinck) to play at being the Prince only for the real Prince (a splendid turn from Albrecht Schoenhals) to see the story in the newspaper and decide to visit for himself. Confusion reigns as the fresh Prince gets mistaken for the real one and vice versa with Lampes treating his royal highness as if he’s the phoney. Meanwhile the journey’s not a fruitless one for the actual Prince as he takes a shine to Lampes’ secretary Friedel (Carola Höhn) who is as down-to-earth as her employers are on another planet.

It's a hoot and showcases the German sense of humour as well as Sirk’s already impressive skills of performance management and narrative control.

 

The final feature, Pillars of Society (Stützen der Gesellschaft, 1935) was the director’s third and took it’s inspiration again from Scandinavia, this time Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen’s 1878 play. It’s a tale impossible to separate from the circumstances of its making with enough anti-capitalist/corrupting greed to satisfy both left and right as well as being what Bergfelder calls “an advance in Sirk’s staging and editing”. It’s very much a Play for Today featuring a corrupt and lying man who sacrifices the truth for profit and also has more children than he knows how to betray…

 

Oddly enough it also starts off in the United States where émigré Johann Tonnessen (Albrecht Schoenhals) has made a success as a farmer and after twenty years away decides to accompany his friend’s circus on their tour of his home country. This is inevitably going to be bad news for his former friend and business partner, Consul Karsten Bernick (Heinrich George) who is the titular pillar of society with wife Betty (Maria Krahn), ward Dina (Suse Graf) and his beloved son Olaf (Horst Teetzmann) who is strangely obsessed with America, cowboys and Native Americans.

 

Consul Bernick has lied his way to the top though, falsely accusing Johann of embezzlement to cover his mismanagement of the shipping firm they used to run together and so the latter gets the coolest of welcomes on his return even though both Dina and Olaf are immediately interested in Uncle Johanne’s adventures in the land of the free. Bernick has also spread the word that Dina is Johanne’s illegitimate daughter when in fact she is the result of his indiscretion.

Be sure, however, that your sins will find you out and sure enough everything unravels for the Consul as it is revealed that Johann committed no crime and his daughter is actually Bernick’s. As Bernick tries to buy himself time he forces one of his ships to set sail before being fully refitted and it steams off into trouble during a storm with Olaf stowed away in search of America…

 

There’s some splendid work as the ship battles the storm and Johann joins the locals in trying to rescue the boy… Will Bernick’s tragic lies create even more sorrow?  Once again, Sirk deals with different worlds and the natural justice for those who are true to themselves and others; it’s an affecting film even knowing that Heinrich George went on to make propaganda films for the new regime.

 

 

Also included in the set are Sirk’s shorts Two Greyhounds (Zwei Windhunde) (1934), Three Times Before (3 x Ehe) (1934) and The Imaginary Invalid (Der eingebildete Kranke) (1935). These were Sirk’s first three projects at UFA and gave him a chance to show what he could do away from the stage and with the help of experienced hands at the studio. All the films are on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from brand-new restorations by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.

 

It’s quite the package and provides an invaluable introduction to the formative work of this major director as well as a snapshot of German filmmaking during the early years of the Nazi government. By 1937 he had escaped with his wife to first France and then onto the USA and new stories which would eventually see him placed in the highest regard. This is where it all began.

 

There’s a must-have limited edition of just 2,000 copies including and O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow along with the following features:

 

·         New audio commentaries on all three features by Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove

·         Magnificent Obsessions – a new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall who gives an excellent overview of Sirk’s career from Germany to Hollywood

·         Optional English subtitles on all features and shorts

·         Alternate “sound” presentation of Three Times Before (made at the same time as the “silent version,” the original sound reel no longer exists – this version is presented with subtitles)

·         A limited collector’s booklet featuring a new extended essay on Sirk’s early works by German cinema expert Professor Tim Bergfelder

 

The set is released on Monday 24^th February so do not hesitate in placing your pre-order NOW via the Eureka website!

 

Fire and ice… Manolescu (1929), with John Sweeney, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming, Day Seven

We belong to each other, I would never let anyone else have you…

Brigitte Helm stands to the right of the screen, a dark shadow receding behind her on the wall as gradually she lowers her right arm with a fisted hand slowly unclenched as she realisation saps the energy from her body. The game is up, devasted and all alone, she’s out of focus and for the first time, off balance… is this it, is there no way back? Don’t bet on it.

Ivan Mosjoukine’s eye’s well up, the most well-honed tear ducts in all silent film, febrile emotion twitching across his mouth and brow, as truth dawns and resolution nears. How do these people lay emotion so bare that we still feel it after almost a century of artifice and the endless replaying of trope and technique? This story was old even when it was first told but I’m still in bits.

This is Fantasy Silent Film, a game in which the combination of two of the best strikers in cinema muto both score hattrick after hattrick combining in ways that seemed impossible especially to this viewer who had no idea they had ever played together. Manolescu… Ivan “The Cat” Mosjoukine versus Brigitte “The Panther” Helm in a battle for our eyeballs, our attention… our love. Honestly, you could have taken the script for Carry on Cabby and given it to these two and we’d all be collapsed in a pool of utter distraction. You want engagement well here he and she are…

Brigitte Helm

Director Viktor Tourjansky, had previously worked with fellow emigree Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin/ Mosjoukine on Michel Strogoff (1926) and also assisted Abel Gance for Napoléon (1927) and boy does it show. This film shows every late silent period trick in the book, from audacious single take shots of Brigitte and Ivan getting out of a car, walking across through hotel revolving doors and through reception, to mixing positive and negative during a dream sequence and following every movement and expression of the performers with a camera so mobile you could pin a tail on it and call it Rover!

It’s a feast for the eyes and mine are welling up because I wasn’t able to see it on the big screen BUT at least we have the Giornate’s Silent Stream and I’ve no doubt this will get a screening in GB soon enough. In addition to the performers we also get exteriors including the Alps, Paris and Monte Carlo… all beautifully captured by cinematographer Carl Hoffmann, who had some form, including Fritz Lang’s epic Die Nibelungen and Murnau’s Faust.

The story was adapted by Robert Liebmann and inspired by the true story of the Romanian fraudster George Manolescu, a notorious fixture of the Berlin press at the turn of the century and source for three other films. In this version, Manolescu is inspired to raise his criminal game after fleeing his debtors in Paris and meeting a femme most fatale in the form of feline Cleo (Brigitte Helm) on route to Monte Carlo. Cleo is being kept in the manner to which she is accustomed by the plump gangster Jack (Heinrich George). The two meet on a train and share a night’s intimacy after Cleo sneaks into George’s compartment to avoid the police who are on Jack’s trail.

Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin/ Mosjoukine

Needless to say the combination of George/Ivan and Cleo/Brigitte is absolutely electric with the elder actor’s inherent delicacies balanced by the uncanny flexibility of Helm’s physicality. He touches her and she bends her back, forcing that unbelievable profile at an awkward angle against the cabin seat as she tries to avoid him. You sense that he respected his co-stars, just a hunch, because there seems absolute trust on show. How else to explain their ease in creating sexual tension? Fire and ice but (coolest) cat on (cooler) cat!

Cleo always follows the money and dumps George at the station in Monte Carlo before he spots her in the street and finds his way to her hotel room. Jack’s arrival forces him to action especially when the thug pulls a gun and Cleo’s cries alert the police who finally get their man. Jack out of the way, George has only one way to keep his new girl and that’s to steal jewels from the old lady next door in order to provide a viable economic and amorous alternative for Cleo and the two quickly become partners in love and crime. There’s a lovely sequence later on when George’s disguises for his crime-spree to come are lined up like a deck of cards… it’s the romance of Riviera robbery; everybody loves a con in the sun.

The two move on to Paris where Cleo’s an irresistible object to many a moveable man, flaunting her powers in front of George; the two are alike but so different and whilst he can manipulate and emotionally defraud, she cannot help herself or perhaps she is less controlled. She’s not a soulless vamp though as we shall see; these two are, of course, a tragedy waiting to happen.

Sure enough Jack, out of prison, tracks them down and in a face off with George, fractures his skull with a heavy ornament, leaving Cleo shouting murder.

The film changes course… George wakes up in hospital being cared for by nice Nurse Jeanette (Dita Parlo); it’s the calm after the storm and, almost too calm if I’m honest but, and Parlo can hold her own in this company and is the catalyst for a change in the relationship between the two leads. Can these two leopards change their spots?

 

I am only fulfilling my duty as a nurse… (yeah, right sister)

This is a truly exceptional film with a sparkling digital restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung which took over four years to combine as many original materials, in order to reconstruct the film according to the 1929 censorship certificate. All elements were scanned in 4K at L’Immagine Ritrovata as detailed in Luciano Palumbo’s notes on the Giornate site. What a job they did.

 

John Sweeney’s accompaniment wrapped itself around this film like the most luxurious of musical blankets, never strained but not just easy on the ear, as dynamic and quicksilver as the performers and the camerawork, duetting with Helm and Mosjoukine tonally, emotionally and stylistically. Oh to have been in the same room… Maybe not tomorrow but soon.

  

Jack of all trades, master too.

Anna May Wong on... Song (1928) with Stephen Horne, Regents Street Cinema

“…a hapless piece of work that is years behind the times.”

Mordaunt Hall turned the scathe-ometer up to eleven in his New York Times review when Song was released 1928 but you can’t always believe what you read (as ITY-Arthur followers will know all too well). Maybe I’m too kind to these old dears but what was just the latest in that week’s endless set of new silent films for Mordaunt to assess has now become a rarity that is important just for having survived.

This is also the film Anna May Wong made not long before Piccadilly and even Hall notes that she is “a competent little actress” but one respected perhaps more now than then given the changed context but also our deeper understanding of what “little actresses” of her background had to face.

Song on it's first release

Silent films are also uniquely malleable because they are always part of a new context created by their musical accompaniment. Today Song had the multi-instrumental support of Stephen Horne as it was projected in the Regents Street Cinema, itself a living museum haunted by the flickering ghosts of the Lumiers… And… it came through rather well!

Anna May Wong excelled in a rare part that allowed her to just be – a good-hearted soul and not just an exotic token or worse still, something sinister. She responds to the camera’s frequently intense gaze with naturalistic gestures and a positive focus on her character and rides out some of the more extraordinary plot elements and costumery with ease and good humour. She’s equally at home fighting off attackers, coming to the rescue during a train robbery and selflessly supporting a selfish man who can’t see further than his own infatuation.

Mr Hall... step outside.

Song or Schmutziges Geld (Dirty Money) was an Anglo-German co-production directed by Richard Eichberg who then direct Wong in Pavement Butterfly (1929) before her famous West End turn in 1929.

The story is set in Istanbul and there are some lovely establishing shots of what would become the scene of Liverpool FC’s Champions League triumph almost 80 years later. Anna May plays Song an urchin eking out a living by catching lobsters on the beach. She is spotted by two men who proceed to assault her only to be fought off by a passer-by, Jack Houben (Heinrich George). It’s a pretty grim fight that’s only won when Song gets stuck into help her rescuer.

Jack shows off his day job

Jack takes Song back for temporary shelter at his humble home and frightens her to death as he demonstrates his profession – a knife thrower. In spite of Song’s nervous response to having sharpened steel utensils flung at her, Jack decides she could be an asset to his act and before long she’s dancing in front of the regulars at the homely music hall where he works.

Eichberg clearly relishes depicting this venue and the leering audience is shown in delicious close up as the weird and wonderful “turns” take to the stage.

Song and Jack’s life seems to have settled but the arrival of a famous ballet dancer is about to upset the precarious balance of their apple cart. There are posters for Gloria Lee (Mary Kid) all over town and Song decides to use one to make an improvised table in Jack’s house, fighting off the local boys hired to deliver this promotion.

Richard Eichberg directs Anna on stage

Jack takes one look at the smiling face on the table and flashes back to a time when he and Gloria were a couple… everything ended badly as he fought a young man pursuing her. The man fell overboard whilst they were on a cruise and diving in after him both men were lost, presumed drowned.

Jack still carries a very large torch and it’s only a matter of time before its subject turns up at the club accompanied by her theatrical manager/paramour Dimitri Alexi  (Hans Adalbert Schlettow, who’s close shave in A Cottage on Dartmoor still gives me the shivers). Thankfully mutual recognition does not occur during Jack’s act and Song emerges unscathed before Jack and Gloria see each other.

After establishing that Jack is clearly not dead Gloria invites him to her show but she’s more interested in her “manager” than this blast from the past. But Jack’s a fool for love… If only he was rich enough to compete on the present-buying stakes? Jack follows a get rich scheme dreamt up by his accordionist (Julius E. Herrmann) – a can’t-fail train robbery. Someone tips the coppers a wink and Jack only escapes by hiding under the loco… he is nearly blinded as the machine lets off steam and Song comes to his rescue.

Drama on stage as Jack faints...

Only an operation can save Jack’s sight and he is convinced that Gloria will help… but Gloria is really very busy and realising this Song steps in to help convince Jack otherwise, using Gloria’s cast-of clothes to convince him that she is his the ballerina come to assist (we can only assume that Jack’s hearing has also been affected for him to succumb to this kindly deception).

Jack needs an operation and a massive £20 is required to fund it, surely Gloria will help and, even if she doesn’t her manager is on hand to give Song all the assistance she needs. She goes to work as the star attraction in the club – and she can dance unlike the “ballerina” as the lavish set-pieces demonstrate. But everything she does is for the curmudgeonly knife thrower… what will happen when he has eyes to see the face of his guardian angel?

Song is a melodrama with some mad plot turns but Eichberg tells it well enough helped by some excellent cinematography from Heinrich Gärtner and the designs of Willi Herrmann. Whilst Mary Kid makes for an unconvincing ballerina, Heinrich George makes for a believable thrower of knives and, of course, Anna May Wong's smile and ready tears steal the show.

Stephen Horne said that, as a young accompanist, he had played along to Song sight unseen (the days before preview discs) and the film’s frequent narrative lurches had made for an engaging challenge. Today he knew what was coming and flute, accordion and piano were deployed to compelling effect.

Song may not be a great film but, in this cinema and with this musician playing it was a very entertaining one and if all else failed, it still showcases one the era’s best actors in a role of some depth... and, had he been here today, I'm certain Mordaunt Hall would have agreed!

Song is very rarely screened but is in very good condition… surely it’s worth a DVD release? If you liked Piccadilly you’ll probably like this too and if you’re a fan of Mr Horne’s unique lyricism you’ll want him playing on the release as well.

So come on Herr Copyright-Owner…