Rent Sirk in Germany 1934-1935 (1935)
- General info
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- Synopsis:
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 Madchen vom Moorhof) and Pillars of Society (Stiitzen der Gesellschaff). In Sirk's directorial debut - the comedy April Fool!-a businessman and shameless social climber. Julius Lampe (Erhard Siedel). is subjected to a cruel April Fools' Day prank when he is led to believe a noble prince (Albrecht Schoenhals) intends to personally inspect his pasta factory. Then, in Sirk's first melodrama The Girl from Marsh Croft, farmer Karsten Dittmar (Kurt Fischer-Fehling) falls in love with the disreputable young maid Helga Christmann (Hansi Knoteck) - much to the dismay of his Fiancee Gertrud Gerhart (Ellen Frank). Finally, in Pillars of Society, wealthy Norwegian shipbuilder Consul Karsten Bernick (Heinrich George) must face up to a lifetime of corruption and deceit when farmer Johann Tonnessen (Albrecht Schoenhals) returns to Norway after a twenty-year absence and discovers that Bernick has smeared his good name. Presented alongside Sirk's shorts Two Greyhounds (Zwei Windhunde). Three Times Before (DreimalFhe) and The Imaginary Invalid (Der eingebildeteKranke). these three features - all released in 1935 - showcase the burgeoning talents of a filmmaker who would go on to become one of the most important figures in the history of Hollywood cinema. Sirk's early works are presented here on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from brand-new restorations by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation. - Actors:
- Erhard Siedel, Lina Carstens, Charlott Daudert, Werner Finck, Paul Westermeier, Carola Höhn, Albrecht Schoenhals, Annemarie Korff, Hilde Schneider, Hubert von Meyerinck, Herbert Weissbach, Wilhelm Egger-Sell, Kurt Felden, Erika Glässner, Erwin Hartung, Gerhard Heine, Johan Kaart, Isolde Laugs, Max Mothes, Odette Orsy
- Directors:
- Douglas Sirk
- Producers:
- Robert Neppach
- Writers:
- H.W. Litschke, Rudo Ritter
- Aka:
- Seine Durchlaucht, Herr Müller/ Das Mädchen vom Moorhof / Stützen der Gesellschaft
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Countries:
- Germany
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 24/02/2025
- Run Time:
- 347 minutes
- Languages:
- German, Silent
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Original Aspect Radio 1.2:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Two Greyhounds [Zwei Windhunde) - 1934 short by Douglas Sirk
- Three Times Before (Dreimal Ehe) [silent version] - 1935 short by Douglas Sirk
- Alternate "sound" presentation of Three Times Before (produced at the same time as the "silent version" - as the original sound reel no longer exists, this version is presented with subtitles)
- The Imaginary Invalid (Der eingebildete Kranke) - 1935 short by Douglas Sirk
- New audio commentaries on all three features by Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove
- Magnificent Obsessions- new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall on Sirk's career from Germany to Hollywood
- Disc 1:
- This disc includes the main feature
- Disc 2:
- This disc includes special features
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Reviews (1) of Sirk in Germany 1934-1935
Early Sirkumstances - Sirk in Germany 1934-1935 review by CH
Most familiar as director of Fifties suburban dramas which have had him pitched as a techniclor Tennessee Williams, Douglas Sirk had a more varied career than that. Never more so than with the mid-Thirties short films, features and theatrical adaptation which he made before leaving Germany. At last, thanks to a pair of discs assembed by the Eureka company, these are available for wider viewing.
Where to start? Perhaps the most accomplished is The Girl from Marsh Croft. Adapted from a 1908 novel, it takes place in a countryside where the sky is as long as the fields on which one of the toilers is a young woman. As a maid elsewhere, she had been impregnated by her employer whom she condemned in a court case which did not go her way - apart from her refusing to allow him to swear on the Bible as she she did not want her child to be a blasphemer's. (All of which suggests something of Hardy's Tess.) So impressed by this public stance was a farmer that he offered her work - and finds himself more than taken by her despite being tacitly spoken for by a woman of higher standing than him.
Complicated again by his fearing that he stabbed somebody on his stag night (his drink had been laced by an unseen hand). All of which is very much the stuff of melodrama but Sirk keeps up so measured a pace that the viewer enjoys something more subtle than sensationalism. Who can fail to feel for these characters? Some might say that it anticipcates his later work (and shares that relish of domestic settings) but here is in fact the equal of it.
The social order is also a part of the rather different April, April! in which a Fool's Day joke - about a purported royal visit to a pasta factory - is folded back on itself twice over. (Could it have been inpsired by thr 1910 incident when Virginia Woolf and others, suitably disguised, were welcomed upon the Dreadnought battleship as a Prince of Abyssinia with his retinue?) Much sport and romance ensue, all of this as pleasingly unlikely as Two Greyhounds in which two applicants for a bookeeping job assume that the other is the employer-to-be. All that is sustained for half an hour of unlikely but persusasive farce which is better sustained than a period-set abridged take on Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. There is more here (including a version of Ibsen).
A great surprise, here is a set to relish.