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Sirk In Germany 1934-1935 - Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Eureka Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th March 2025). |
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The Film
 "An undisputed master of melodrama, director Douglas Sirk is best known for the lavish, sweeping romances he made during the last decade of his career, including Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life. But by the time Sirk – born Hans Detlef Sierck – arrived in Hollywood, he had already made several films in his native Germany. The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present this collection of Sirk’s earliest films, all of which established a blueprint for his later work: April Fool! (April, April!), The Girl from Marsh Croft (Das Mädchen vom Moorhof) and Pillars of Society (Stützen der Gesellschaft)." April, April!: The owner of the most prosperous pasta factory in town, Julius Lampe (Erhard Siedel) and his wife Tilde (She Walks by Night's Lina Carstens) are getting too pompous and above their station even for the fellow nouveau riche. When Lampe receives a letter from the secretary of the Prince of Holsten-Böhlau requesting some of his "tropical pasta" his wife announces it to the guests of a musical soiree being given by her to showcase the singing skills of her daughter Mirna (Charlott Daudert). When she is overheard remarking that perhaps now that they are moving up in society, Mirna may be better suited to a better match than her "flour vendor" fiance/aspiring composer Reinhold Leisegang (Eight Hours Don't Make a Day: A Family Series' Werner Finck), his business partner Finke (The Devil's General's Paul Westermeier) – also slighted by Lampe as to the degree to which their flour has contributed to his success – and his crony (Virgin Report's Herbert Weissbach) decide to play an April Fool's prank (midnight having just struck) by phoning Lampe and posing as the secretary and announcing that the prince will be making a royal visit to the factory that very day. When Tilde tosses her guests out to start preparations, Finke thinks twice about revealing the prank and leaves the Lampes to preen. Lampe has already put an announcement on the front page of the papers before Reinhold learns of his partner's prank and tries to warn them. In order to save face, Lampe and Reinhold decide to substitute a frank prince in traveling businessman Müller (One, Two, Three's Hubert von Meyerinck). Little do they realize that the prince (The Damned's Albrecht Schoenhals) has read the papers and his secretary (Annemarie Korff) has interpreted it as a miscommunication so the prince decides to visit Lampe and the factory without the pomp and circumstance (in contrast to the Lampes who had their staff and factory workers working overnight to pretty up things). Of course, there is a case of mistaken identity which results in the prince flirting with Lampe's secretary Friedel (Night Crossing's Carola Höhn) and drama as Tilde prematurely spread gossip that Mirna is to be engaged to the prince… A light comedy of mistaken identities and much shoe leather, April, April! is quite unlike what fans might expect from the "King of Melodrama" Douglas Sirk. His first feature at UFA back when he was "Detlef Sierck" however, is still a biting commentary on the pretensions of the bourgeoisie; indeed, however apparent the opportunities for misunderstandings are for the audience as they fall into place, the Lampe are fully deserving of every embarrassment heaped upon them. Lampe is a fool while his wife is a harpy. Mirna is a snob but develops enough sense to go from trying to smooth over things with the prince for her family to setting things right in spite of her personal humiliation. The prince is amused when he learns of the situation but indulges the Lampes seemingly less for his entertainment than out of pity which the Lampe's servants and workers seem to also possess for their employers – although not a musical, their chanting during their preparations seems to be a gentle mocking in addition to providing a rhythm to which the editors structure the montage – while the Lampe's social equals are portrayed in general as hypocrites, fellow nouveau riche who regard the Lampes as parvenus in their ostentation while helping themselves to heaps of champagne and hors d'oeuvres (presumably Reinhold's artistic ambitions and being the target of derision from Tilde make him more sympathetic and worthy of good fortune than the others). Once the game of mistaken identities and assumptions is underway, the film holds no surprises – one could imagine a Marx Brothers treatment of the story with plenty of sight gags and more insults – but the performers are generally charming and the production values are handsome. The film was simultaneously shot in German and Dutch versions, but the latter version (co-directed by singer/songwriter Jacques van Tol) is considered lost.  Helga Christmann (Hansi Knoteck) is The Girl from Marsh Croft, the pariah of the surrounding village and lands for taking a lawsuit against her employer Peter Nolde (Erwin Klietsch) naming him as the father of her illegitimate child. When Nolde is prepared to swear his testimony denying his paternity on the Bible, Helga withdraws her charge lest her child be the son of a perjurer. Helga is afraid to return home to her parents (Lina Carstens and M's Franz Stein) who were expecting financial compensation from the case; however, her strong convictions have impressed handsome, young farmer Karsten Dittmar (Kurt Fischer-Fehling) who offers her a job as a maid at his family farm. Although Karsten's parents (The Hound of the Baskervilles' Friedrich Kayssler and Jeanette Bethge) make her feel welcome, Helga nevertheless feels homesick with the local boatman's recitation of the marsh's ghostly legends a source of comfort. Just as she believes she has found her place, however, Karsten's fiancee Gertrud (Sex Life in a Convent's Ellen Frank) – daughter of the local bailiff (Blue Angel's Eduard von Winterstein) – disapproves of Helga and requests of Karsten to dismiss her before they are married. When Karsten decides against firing and innocent girl, however, his mother must intercede and gently nudge Helga to leave of her own volition. Karsten's attempts to take a public stand for Helga only make things worse and she may have to sacrifice everything she holds dear for his sake. Based on the novel by Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf who became the first female winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, The Girl from Marsh Croft is more like what what we have come to know as the Sirkian melodrama with its indictment of the hypocritical upper classes and outsider protagonists associated with the purity of the land. Although the temporal setting appears to be the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the class system seems to be more of a vestige of medieval times with the opening lawsuit trial seeming more like an inquisition with a ruling against Helga apparently a foregone conclusion – similarly, the gathering in which Karsten is to formally state his intention to marry Gertrud feels like a pagan ceremony with Gertrud looking more like a high priestess and Karsten the victim – and Helga may have believed she was saving the father of her child from damnation but the judge (Metropolis' Theodor Loos) and those in the court obviously see her "good deed" as saving face for one of their social equals as they end up looking the other way while knowing that he is guilty and a liar within a hair of being a perjurer. Although she has had a child out of wedlock and there is no suggestion that she was raped, Helga remains pure of spirit to the point where the film has to tell us she has fallen in love with Karsten where some might just see loyalty to someone who has kind to her; on the other hand, the film makes more obvious that Karsten does not realize he is falling for her as he is acting on his principles (although that may also be due to Fischer-Fehling's less than subtle performance). Of more modest social background, the Dittmars as well as their servants are more accepting of Helga – apart from the maids who mock her early on during the "servant sale" in which there is competition for positions (although one surly maid does offer a retort to a potential employer that she must be workshy since she is looking for a new position every year that employers should learn to treat their workers better) – while the upper class seems more concerned of their own reputations suffering with proximity to her. Karsten's father is the wise man of few words who conveys rare tenderness in a crucial scene whereas Gertrud's father only seems to hold back his opinions while reading the room. Karsten's mother offers a gentle defense to Gertrud's position on Helga that "the heart behaves in irrational ways" but Gertrud becomes increasingly unlikable with more displays of snobbery and vanity. Like April, April!'s Mirna she does redeem herself in the end in spite of a bit of verbal haughtiness that seems more like saving face than true bitterness. Sirk's visual style is more interesting here than in his previous feature and shorts with a calm pond surface rippling with the splash of a stone forming part of an optical transition while a shot during a pub brawl is revealed to be pointed into a mirror that is shattered as a lead in to a fade out, and Sirk's regular cinematographer up to that point Willy Winterstein does more with the landscapes, rustic interiors, and lighting than with the bright and flat urban settings of his previous feature. Whether or not Sirk's Hollywood melodrama producer Ross Hunter saw the film, The Girl from Marsh Croft certainly seems like the embryo of those films with this early Sirk "women's picture" having not yet inverted the conventions of the thinking man and the intuitive woman. Lagerlöf's novel had previously been adapted in its native Sweden in 1917 by Victor Sjöström (The Phantom of Carriage) and again in 1940 while another German adaptation would follow in 1958.  In Pillars of Society, rancher and horse trainer Johann Tonnessen (Albrecht Schoenhals) reluctantly accompanies Urbini (The Green Hell's Walther Süssenguth) and his circus from the New World back to the old starting with the coastal village in Norway that he fled twenty years before. Johann makes a grand entry with the circus procession through the center of town to get a rise out of his staid sister Betty (Kongo-Express' Maria Krahn) and her husband Consul Karsten Bernick (She's Heinrich George); however, he does not realize just the impact his return has on the town's social set who have circulated rumors that when he vanished, he not only left behind an illegitimate daughter in Dina Dorf (Suse Graf) but also took his brother-in-law's savings with him. While Betty is eager to prevent a scandal from their Cowboys and Indians-loving son Olaf and Dina – who lives with the Bernicks as a charity case and wants to escape being married off to deputy Krapp (A Night in May's Oskar Sima) who is blackmailing Bernick – associating with Johann, Bernick himself is worried about what truths will emerge about what he has done to become the biggest man in town and the secrets of his private life since he has sunk most of his renewed fortune into a project to expand the shipyards. Just as Bernick believes he has mollified Johann, the circus' clown Hansen (The Heath is Green's Paul Beckers) has organized the disgruntled fishermen to humiliate Bernick in the company of the town elite through by voicing their contempt for him and his self-serving decisions through song. When Johann discovers just what rumors have been circulating about him, he threatens to expose them, culminating in a literal perfect storm and the potential loss of what truly counts among what Bernick holds dear. Sirk's adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's stage play, Pillars of Society is mostly a fine melodrama and an improvement on the source with the film's three main characters embodying but differently experiencing and expressing their frustrations with the hypocrisies of the upper-middle class. Johann has simply left and this act has lead others to circulate rumors about why he would choose to not be part of their circle, Dina lives comfortably but must pretend not to hear what people say about her in her presence since she is considered the Bernicks' niece but treated more like a lady's maid to Betty – she, not Johann, is the voice of these frustrations – while Bernick himself justifies his love of his son as justification for his actions but is unable to show the same affection to his unacknowledged daughter and likewise did not start the rumors about Johann's embezzlement or Dina's paternity but has benefited by not refuting them and thus betrayed them both. While the ending is actually more satisfying than the stage play – particularly by shifting some of the villainy to Krapp – there are a number of moments that Sirk rushes through including both the revelation and subsequent clarification of Dina's paternity and her reaction to it in order to get to the stormy climax and the more dramatically-satisfying resolution. Perhaps because it is based on a stage play rather than a novella, Sirk shortchanges the potential taboo of a relationship between Dina and Johann as well as has less time to more subtly underline the schisms between the fishermen and the business class which are illustrated through thoughtless remarks by Betty's "Society for Social Morals" hens and Bernick's business cronies on one side and scenes involving the fishermen speaking openly about things the other group does not openly acknowledge (apart from using such secrets for leverage). While The Girl from Marsh Croft was momentarily homesick, this German adaptation of a Norwegian play produced under the Nazis perhaps feels most party-friendly because of the repeated use of the word "heimat" for a place where things must be confronted rather than left behind; and it is implied that the resolution has lead to the betterment of the town, making it no longer necessary for Johann and Dina to leave it (although Sirk certainly would the moment he got his passport back from the Nazis). 
Video
Unreleased before on home video, April, April! comes to 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.19:1 pillarboxed fullscreen presentation is the best-looking of the three films in this set, presumably because it was lesser seen over the years and also likely the recipient of the more recent digital restoration work by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.  The Girl from Marsh Croft's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.19:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray looks less immaculately restored than April, April! with far more archival damage including shots within scenes and parts of scenes where the image becomes noticeably faded or degraded. The bulk of the film looks quite good in comparison but the lack of prefatory restoration notes may be indicative of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung handing over a digitization of the film material and Eureka having to do a bit of cleanup or perhaps all of the restoration work was done earlier and this master is just a scan of that photochemical work.  Pillars of Society's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.19:1 pillarboxed fullscreen presentation lies somewhere in the middle of the of the other two with some truly degraded and damaged reel changes and optical transitions while the body of the film looks largely comparable to April, April! in terms of studio interiors and backlot exteriors. The American scenes and some of the Norwegian coast exteriors are presumably stock footage and look softer and scratchier than the reverse angles with the actors, and the slightly higher contrasts during the storm sequence at the end may be part of the original photography. 
Audio
Although all three are relatively early sound films – at a time when UFA still simultaneously produced some as alternate silent versions – the German LPCM 2.0 mono tracks all sound quite clean, free of any buzz with only light surface noise from the optical elements and, in some occasions, sound effects that sound quite vivid for nearly century old mono. Scoring comes across well while the musical performances within each of the films sounds less convincing. Optional English subtitles are free of errors. 
Extras
Disc one accompanies April, April! with an audio commentary by Douglas Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove who provides background on Sirk's background in theater, staging controversial productions including a modern dress, "cinematic" version of Shakespeare's "The Twelfth Night" that got him an invitation to direct films at UFA who had just lost a number of filmmakers of Jewish filmmakers who were fleeing the Nazis and non-Jewish filmmakers who despised them. Wingrove muses on the reasons Sirk stayed in Germany making films for three years under the Nazis before moving to France and then the United States including the fact that cinema was less-censored than the theater and like many intellectuals he may not have believed that the Nazi party would last (and it possibly this attitude of the middle class that contributed to his depiction of the bourgeois throughout his filmography). Wingrove also provides background on the film's cast, Sirk's treatment of music in his films which were never conventionally "musical" as well as the themes of the film with regard to the depiction of the classes.  Disc one also includes three shorts. The first is his Sirk's debut Zwei Windhunde (29:58) which anticipates April! April's mistaken identities as two men apply for the same accounting job and mistake one another for the firm's president, going out to dinner believing each one hosting the other, striking a business partnership believe each has the capital, and making big business deals that send the stock market into a storm. Dreimal Ehe (1935), in which a bickering husband and wife both tell their skewed versions of their martial strife to a beleaguered divorce attorney who has his own version of their story, is presented in two versions. The short was shot in 35mm with sound but only survives as a silent 16mm copy of the sound – which suggests that the silent version was intended to be distributed in 16mm only – with separately-stored intertitles. The silent version (19:08) is presented with the intertitles reinserted based on censorship records while the "sound" version (16:30) derives the dialogue from the censorship records and includes them as onscreen subtitles since the audio is lost. There is no sound including scoring on either version. Der eingebildete Kranke (37:51) is an adaptation of Molière's stage comedy "The Imaginary Invalid" in which a hypochondriac manipulated to spend vast amounts on various medical treatments by a quack doctor promises his daughter to the doctor's son who is in love with a medical student with more practical suggestions for her father's treatment. This is perhaps the stagiest of the three Sirk shorts despite a comparable amount of camera coverage, but Sirk might have been reined in by the source. The script was adapted by Rudo Ritter who also scripted April, April! and Zwei Windhunde.  Disc two's extras start with an audio commentary by Douglas Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove on The Girl from Marsh Croft who discuss the source novel and how despite its original Swedish setting it resembled the German "heimat (homeland)" style of literature popular with the Nazis (more so with the film's German setting) but Wingrove disagrees with criticisms of the film as being "more Nazi than Hitler" and points out the less-than-idealized depiction of a rural setting with similar class tensions and social hypocrisy to that of April, April!. Wingrove also provides background on the cast, noting that Knoteck despised her film image as the archetypal heimat heroine, as well as rumors that she and her husband Viktor Staal were actually part of the anti-Nazi underground in addition to other actors whose subsequent careers were tainted by work in films during the Nazi era including more overt propaganda works (although his assessment of the performances does confirm that Fischer-Fehling is simply bad rather than "theatrical"). Pillars of Society is also accompanied by an audio commentary by Douglas Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove in which he suggests that the film comes closes of the three in the set to reflecting Nazi ideology while also being of the opinion that it is the finest filming of an Ibsen play that feels more cinematic and less of a "filmed play." He discusses how the film reflects ongoing themes and anticipates others in Sirk's subsequent work as well as the ways in which it seems to critique fascist ideologies through the town's ritual ceremonies to reward the wealthy for seemingly benevolent acts really designed to bolster their reputations while also providing an analysis of Bernick's character as not an absolute villain despite his use of violence and intimidation to get what he wants. On the other hand, the track also provides some stories of how the careers of some of the cast including George who was a Marxist and Communist who then bent over backwards to court the Nazis and starred in several propaganda films before being arrested after Germany surrendered and dying in a Soviet internment a few years later. Also discusses is Sirk's first wife who also became active in the Nazi party and prevented him from seeing his son since his second wife was Jewish. She would also push their son to be a child actor in Nazi propaganda films before he was conscripted into the army and killed in Russia at age nineteen. While Wingrove did a good job of discussing Sirk's career before and during these three films, "Magnificent Obsessions" (20:25) with film historian Sheldon Hall tells more of the story of his subsequent German productions before fleeing the country, his European works elsewhere, and how he finally broke into American film after a few years raising chickens after his first attempt at mounting a remake of one of his German films fell through, his more varied genre work before he became synonymous with melodramas stateside, as well as his later stage work and teaching at the Munich Film School where he produced a few shorts including one featuring future Sirk acolyte Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an actor. 
Packaging
The limited edition first pressing comes with an O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow and a collector's booklet featuring a new extended essay on Sirk's early works by German cinema expert Tim Bergfelder who, like Hall, notes that Sirk was largely considered just a studio director and that his reassessment as an auteur did not really come about until the sixties and seventies with individual critics like Andrew Sarris and the French journal Cahiers du Cinema writing about his works, leading to theatrical and television retrospectives including works that had simply been out of circulation while some of those films widely available now had once been considered as lost as the Dutch version of April, April!. Saslow also goes back in his essay to Sirk's German career to demonstrate that there is actually a wider variety of films than the limited range that represents the "Sirk canon."
Overall
The three films and shorts that represent Sirk In Germany 1934-1935 reveal that his later penchant for melodrama was not a new development but it was also rooted in social commentary rather than the pleasures of seeing pretty Hollywood stars in emotional and physical agony.
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