Dir: Frank Borzage | Drama 98’
With Alone in Berlin currently back on screens now is a good time to recall this earlier adaptation of Hans Fallada’s 1932 novel; first filmed in 1933 in a version – now lost – directed by Fritz Wendhausen and starring Hermann Thimig and Hertha Thiele.
The following year it enjoyed the good fortune to be filmed by one of the cinema’s great romantics – Frank Borzage – with Douglas Montgomery and Margaret Sullavan; the flavour of the dialogue captured when the heroine looks in a shop window and declares “If I could afford that bed I’d be the happiest person alive”; which brings the response “If you could afford that bed, it wouldn’t mean anything to you”.
Too often the phrase “strong language” is now employed simply as a euphemism for swearing; but for really strong language it’s truly remarkable to hear in a Hollywood film over ninety years an employee – who subsequently casually refers to being a nudist – turning on his boss and declaring: “We don’t share in your profits, why should we shoulder your losses!”
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