The Night Before the Divorce (Robert Siodmak, 1942)

https://cinearchitecture.tumblr.com/post/614111030086385664/the-night-before-the-divorce-robert-siodmak

 

Rediscovering Voruntersuchung: Those Who Murdered

After the success of collective, Vertov-influenced street urban drama Menschen am Sonntag [People on Sunday] (Siodmaksulmerwilderzinnemann, 1929), which became the calling card for its legendary team, the main creative force behind the film, Robert Siodmak, was given the chance to direct his solo debut feature for UFA, Abschied [Farewell]. Made in 1930, this romantic comedy was an unlikely start for a filmmaker who is mostly known for his pessimistic takes on modern life in the metropolis jungles. Some scholars have argued that Siodmak’s interest in expressionist lighting and major themes of the Weimar cinema didn’t divulge until anther comedy of sorts, Der Mann, der seinen Mörder Sucht [Looking for His Murderer] (1931). It was Siodmak’s third feature which proved to be his first major work and fully explore the themes he later became associated with.
Voruntersuchung [Inquest] (1931) is the story of Fritz Bernt, a doomed young student (a central figure of expressionist films since The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), played by Gustav Fröhlich, who after a bitter quarrel with his girlfriend finds her murdered. Consequently, Fritz, as the primary suspect, is arrested and interrogated by a judge who relentlessly trys to prove Fritz’s guilt. But the tension arises as judge’s son is Fritz’s best friend and his daughter in love with the accused.

Pièges (1939)

Robert Siodmak directing Eric Von Stroheim in Pièges; Marie Déa's waiting.

In Pièges, directed by Robert Siodmak, Eric Von Stroheim is playing the role of a mad aristocrat - now a familiar persona of his acting career. He is giving a fashion show to an invisible audience, to ghosts. He lives in an imaginary social milieu which is decayed and out of time. Europe was at the verge of war when Pièges was made and one feels when Stroheim puts his house on fire and hysterically cries out about his “immortal genius”  Siodmak is anticipating the real horror that will break through Europe only within months.

“Pièges is a typical Landru story, and thus with an impeccably French pedigree. […] According to the logic of time loop affecting the historical imaginary, Pièges should really have been made in Hollywood, and by Ernest Lubitsch […], because it illustrates to perfection the ‘miscognition’ factor of Austro-Germans as directors of Habsburg decadence or Parisian operetta, given the prominent presence of Pièges of both Eric Von Stroheim and Maurice Chevalier.”-- Thomas Elsaesser

Pièges also can be seen as an anticipation of American film noir and its fascination with modern Viennese psychology, when the serial killer asks the inspector “have you read Freud?”

Noirmeisters, Part II: Giants

شـاعـرانِ ظـلـمت: راهـنـماي كـارگـردانـانِ ‌نـوآر، بخش دوم

غول‌ها

رابرت سيودماك

لازم بود كسي ميراث اكسپرسيونيزم را به آمريكا بياورد، به زبان زيگموند فرويد آشنا باشد و سر راهش توقفي در پاريس كرده و چيزهايي از رئاليزم شاعرانه فرانسه ديده باشد. سيودماك اين نقش را به‌خوبي بازي كرد و با ساخت ده فيلم نوآر – به اضافه يكي در فرانسه و يكي در آلمان – بزرگ‌ترين غول ژانر در بين مهاجرين باقي ماند. فهرست فيلم‌هايش باورنكردني است: Criss Cross، فرياد شهر، آيينه تاريك، پرونده تلما جوردن، قاتلين، بانوي شبح و اين فهرست هم‌چنان ادامه دارد.

آنتوني مان

بهترين‌هاي مان در اين ژانر نشان‌گر توانايي بي حدوحصر سينمايند. شعر دلتنگ‌كننده او Raw Deal (1948) تقريباً با هيچ ساخته شده و آن‌قدر تاريك است كه به سختي مي‌توانيد دكوري را در آن تشخيص بدهيد. اين فيلم – و ديگر نوآرهاي مان – نشان مي‌دهد كه مرزي بين يك نوآر خوب با آن‌چه كه به سينماي هنري مشهور شده وجود ندارد و حتي نوآر مي‌تواند غالباً از آن پيشي بگيرد.

بيلي وايلدر

غول ريزنقش اتريشي تبار تراژي‌كمدي‌هاي آمريكايي فقط چهار نوآر ساخته، اما براي يك عمر، كافي: غرامت مضاعف، تعطيلي از دست رفته، سانست بلوار و تك‌خال در حفره، همه بين 1944 تا 1951. اگر فقط غرامت را ساخته بود باز هم براي يك عمر كافي بود. اما لطفاً نقش ريموند چندلر را هم فراموش نكنيد كه مي‌توانست از حسين كرد شبستري هم يك قهرمان مردّد اگزيستانسياليست بسازد.

اتو پره‌مينجر

او آفريده شده بود تا نوآر بسازد، منتهي كمپاني فاكس چون فكر مي‌كرد پره‌مينجر از اتريش، سرزمين موسيقي و فرهنگ آمده، بايد كارگرداني اپرتاهاي احمقانه يا كمدي‌هاي اروپايي‌مآب را به او بدهد. بعد از اين كه براي كارگرداني لورا (1944) روبن ماموليان را پشت سرگذاشت، استعداد واقعي او كشف شد. لورا باعث رهايي پره‌مینجر از گرداب فیلم‌های ارزان و کم‌اهمیت فاکس شد اما به نسبت بقیه شاهکارهای او با دانا اندروز دربارۀ ارزش‌های این فیلم اغراق شده. در واقع لورا ایستاترین و ساده‌ترین فیلم مجموعه‌ای است از داستان‌های پرپیچ و خم ِ تقدیر و تصادف، روان‌شناسی، بدبینی مطلق و سبک‌پردازی نفس‌گیر که شامل فرشته سرنگون (1945)، دیزی کنیون (1947) و جایی که پیاده‌روها تمام می‌شوند (1950) می‌شود.

نيكلاس ري

آدم‌هايي عادي، و نه پليس‌هاي بدشانس يا گنگسترهاي پشيمان و خبرنگاران سمج، قهرنان نوآرهاي ري بودند، كه بيشترشان ملورام‌هايي سياه بودند تا نوآر در مفهوم سنتي‌اش. البته او يك‌بار در شاهكاري به‌نام دختر محافل (1958) طلسم را شكست و داستان وكيل فاسد، گنگستر بي‌رحم و دختري در وسط كه بانو سيد چريس باشد را روايت كرد. اما در مكاني خلوت (1950) چطور؟ فيلمي كه به قول ديويد تامسون از هر نماي آن تهديد وبي‌اعتمادي مي‌بارد و برخلاف فيلم مشابهش در همان سال، سانست بلوار، هر كسي زخم خود را برداشته است. ادي مالر، معروف به تزار فيلم نوآر، مكان خلوت را بهترين نوآري كه در تاريخ سينما ساخته شده مي‌داند. هر دو ادعا درست است، كافي است يك‌بار ديگر فيلم را ببينيد.

جولز داسين

در آمريكا و ظرف سه سال با شهر برهنه، نيروي وحشي و بزرگ‌راه دزدان دوربين را به پايين شهر نكبت زده، جاده‌هاي بي‌ترحم و زندان‌هاي هولناك برد. وقتي از آن كشور بيرونش كردند همان كار را در انگلستان، با شب و شهر (1950) و ريچارد ويدمارك كرد و وقتي پايش به فرانسه باز شد و ريفي‌في (1954) را ساخت، كارگرداني بود كه ديگر حتي نمي‌شد به گردش رسيد.

I'm a Poor Writer: Curt Siodmak on Siodmaks

Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) was a novelist and screenwriter, author of the novel Donovan's Brain, which was made into a number of films and the brother of great emigre director Robert Siodmak. His first horror credit was The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and he followed this with two Boris Karloff vehicles, Black Friday (1940) and The Ape (1940). he wrote famous I Walked with a Zombie (1943) for producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur.

Siodmak also directed some less than impressive low budget monster movies, including Bride of the Gorilla (1951), The Magnetic Monster (1953), and Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956). His final significant genre credit was for Terence Fisher’s German production Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death (1962).His novel I, Gabriel was published in Germany, and afterward many of his early novels came back into print. Also, he's written an opera, Song of Frankenstein, and a play about Jack the Ripper.

Manny Farber on The Devil Strikes at Night

In The Devil Strikes at Night, Robert Siodmak (The Killers) is working at second speed on an unglossed Vuillard-plain image of a women-strangler whose fifty or more murders cast a dreadful spot on the inferiority of Aryan police. Most of Siodmak's comment on Hitler's Reich is a dated recall of Hitchcock-Reed thrillers, plus an even sadder use of West German "politics" (as in The Young Lions, The Enemy Below) which shows the Reichland overrun with anti-Nazis and infected with a murderous disaffection for war. However, it is almost worth the admission price to follow the portrait of a hummingly normal looney, which starts on the infantile "science" level of M and becomes a more interesting picture of violence, played suicidally as far into gentleness as credibility allows.

Using a wonderful roughened stone (Mario Adorf) as the shambling killer and shifting between a curious lack of technique and gymnastic inventiveness out of the old experimental film kettle, this ghoulish portrait accomplishes a feat that is rare in current mixed-goodies films. Where Dassin's international potpourri, He who Must Die, has a helpless discomfort about its Potemkin mimicry, as though he were trying to change a diaper in midstream, Siodmak's best moments, flexibly relaxed or tight, seem comfortably inventive. In the movie's peak scene, the village idiot (always on the hunt for food, always eating) wanders into a pick-up meal with a spinsterish Jewess, and the movie settles down, as though forever, as idiocy meets hopeless loneliness in a drifting conversation played as silently as any Vuillard painting of inverted domesticity.

--Manny Farber (March 9, 1959 / The New Leader)