So Ends Our Night

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title So Ends Our Night
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1941
length 120-121 minutes
Rod
Director John Cromwell
script Talbot Jennings
Erich Maria Remarque
production Albert Lewin
David L. Loew
music Louis Gruenberg
camera William H. Daniels
cut William H. Reynolds
occupation

So Ends Our Night is a 1941 American drama directed by John Cromwell . Shortly before the outbreak of World War II , three emigrants meet in Vienna : Josef Steiner, played by Fredric March , who opposes the Nazis and wants to protect his wife Marie ( Frances Dee ), and Ludwig Kern ( Glenn Ford ), son of a Jewish woman Mother, and the Jewish chemist Ruth Holland ( Margaret Sullavan ), with whom Kern falls in love. They are united by a dangerous escape without documents across an insecure Europe.

The film was based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Love Your Neighbor , which was published in Boston in 1941 under the international title Flotsam . Cromwell filmed the book shortly after its publication in the United States, even before the United States entered the war.

action

Austria in 1937, about a year before Austria was annexed to the German Reich : Josef Steiner, a middle-aged man and war veteran, has been an opponent of the National Socialists from the start , and has been the focus of their attention ever since. He fled a prison camp in Germany and is hiding in a seedy guesthouse in Austria, where he meets the young Ludwig Kern, who comes from a wealthy German family, but whose mother was Jewish. Since he is not purely Aryan, he too is exposed to persecution by the National Socialists. The men no longer have passports, are practically stateless and are pondering the best way to get to a safe country.

It doesn't take long for both men to be located and arrested by Austrian officials. The men become friends in a prison cell in which "The Chicken" and "The Pole" are also staying. Ludwig Kern is immediately released, while the Gestapo officer Brenner interrogates Josef Steiner and offers him a passport in exchange for the names of the men who helped him escape from the prison camp. Steiner rejects the request. Since Brenner is not responsible in Austria, his hands are tied. So it happens that Josef and Ludwig share a room again in a guesthouse, where "The Chicken", so called because he always dreams of fried chicken, and "The Pole", a master at pickpocketing and gambling, also find shelter have found. Josef lets him teach him all kinds of tricks.

When the men were trying to cross the border to Czechoslovakia one night, Josef was tormented by thoughts of the day he last saw his wife Marie. After escaping from the camp, he hid in the attic of a friend's house while his friend was supposed to deliver a letter from him to his wife. However, out of fear for his own life, his friend withdrew, which led Josef to leave Germany permanently. To see Marie again beforehand, he went to the market disguised as a market worker, where Marie regularly went shopping. When he saw her, he followed her, asked her not to turn around and assured Marie that he loved her immortally. Then he urged her to divorce him so that the Nazis would no longer have reason to persecute them. One last time his eyes closed around the woman who means everything to him before he left Germany.

In Vienna he is at least able to receive letters from his wife via detours. Josef uses his newly learned card game tricks to earn money for a pass, with which he acquires the new identity of Johann Huber. He manages to get to Prague, where he hopes to find his father. Ludwig has meanwhile also arrived in Prague, where he literally stumbles upon the young Jewish exile Ruth Holland in a small hotel. A friendship quickly develops between the two of them, which is, however, repeatedly subjected to tests due to the fear that dominates Ruth. When Ludwig implores her that she must forget her past, Ruth's memory goes back to the event that prompted her to flee Germany. Ruth, who studied chemistry, was not only abandoned by her German fiancé, but also deeply hurt by words. When she sought consolation from him because she had to leave the university as a Jew, he replied coldly that he also disliked it and wished she had died with her parents, since her career, which was so important to him, was endangered. In order to give Ruth other ideas, Ludwig goes to the cinema with her and the friendship of both turns into love that evening.

A short time later, Ludwig learns that his father committed suicide. So he travels back to Vienna, where Ruth has already returned. There he finds Josef, who has hired himself out as a temporary worker in an amusement park. Josef's friendly boss, Leopold Potzloch, also gives Ludwig a chance and assigns him to his colleague Lilo, who works in the shooting gallery , as an assistant. Ruth has since tried to resume her interrupted studies in Vienna, but fails again. When an Austrian police chief celebrated his winning streak at the shooting gallery one evening, Ludwig grabbed one of the special bullets. However, the police chief is a bad loser and accuses Ludwig of cheating on him. When he also asks to see Ludwig's passport, Ruth intervenes, who is then insulted by the man. In response, Ludwig attacks the policeman. The receipt is a renewed jail term.

When Ludwig is released, he goes to Zurich, where Ruth has found refuge in the luxurious apartment of a friend from her childhood. At the same time, Ludwig leaves the fairground as the Nazis spread out there. Meanwhile, Ludwig and Ruth flee together over the Swiss mountains to Paris. Ruth falls ill there and has to go to the hospital. When Ludwig tries to sell perfume to a man named Ammers, he is blackened by him. Ammers spies for the Nazis. He has to go to jail again. After his release he goes to Geneva, where Ruth is now, who has recovered from her illness. Back in Paris they both team up with their friends, with Josef, “The Chicken” and “The Pole” as well as with Professor Meyer, who always supported Ruth. While they are celebrating their get-together in a café, Meyer tells Ludwig that a French professor, Durant, wants to marry Ruth, which guarantees her French citizenship. When Ludwig tells Ruth about it later that night, she rejects this request.

The refugees are then used as cheap labor on a construction site. When Josef receives a letter that his wife is dying, Ludwig cannot dissuade him from going back to Germany, where he is arrested immediately. He is again interrogated by Brenner and a colonel of the Gestapo. He agrees to reveal his friends' names if he is allowed to spend two days with Marie. Brenner grudgingly grants him this, especially since, as Josef now learns, Marie never filed for divorce. After Marie's death, Brenner leads Josef to a steep staircase and wants the names. However, Joseph does not reveal this and prefers to throw himself to his death.

In Paris, Ludwig is now being imprisoned again. With a ruse Ruth manages to get his release with Durant's help and even to get a passport for herself. Ruth receives the money to be able to buy a passport for Ludwig from Josef's Parisian friend Leo, who has the instruction, should Josef not survive his return to Germany, to pass on his savings to Ruth and Ludwig. Now that both have passports, they dream of marriage and emigration to the United States.

production

Production notes and background

For David L. Lowe and Albert Lewin, who founded their production company in January 1940, this was their first film, a production they directed for United Artists . For Stanley Kramer , who attended the film as a production assistant, it was also his first film. The shooting extended over the period from the end of August to the middle of October 1940. The working title of the film was: Flotsam (flotsam) .

Jack Cosgrove was responsible for the special effects, while William Cameron Menzies was responsible for the equipment and the film construction . The film had an estimated budget of $ 401,000.

The work opens with a written foreword: When the current rulers of Germany came to power, thousands of people were found who were forced to flee to neighboring countries. Suddenly they found themselves in an absurd predicament because they had no passports, no identity papers and no rights. They were denied a place where they could live undisturbed; they had to endure an endless odyssey, which included arrests and imprisonment. Deportation to another country was not a solution either, because the same fate often awaited them there. It is a story of people without passports that began in Vienna in 1937, before the German occupation of Austria.

Glenn Ford always referred to this film as one of his favorite films and Frederic March was also proud of this film.

censorship

The American film censor Joseph Breen , whose main field of activity was the enforcement of the Hays Code , was known as a notorious anti-Semite. This anti-Semitism had a major impact on how he carried out his role as chief censor of the American film industry. He feared that Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood might use the Nazis' treatment of Jews as a vehicle for propaganda. Breen warned the producers that he wanted them to avoid the subject altogether, and put pressure on several large studios to do so. He insisted that any criticism of Hitler's Germany and the Third Reich constituted a violation of the Neutrality Act, and in this respect also referred to the conversations he had with Georg Gyssling , the German consul in America, and his approval for future films. As a result, many things in the film were only hinted at.

Frederic March was blacklisted in 1951, as was John Cromwell . Cromwell then left Hollywood disappointed.

publication

The film premiered on January 21, 1941 in Los Angeles, the Florida premiere took place on January 24, 1941 in Miami. On February 14, 1941, So Ends Our Night was broadcast across the United States. After the premiere in Los Angeles and a fundraising gala in Miami, the White House hosted a private screening of the film for President Franklin D. Roosevelt , who expressed his admiration for the film.

The film was also released in the following countries: Mexico (August 15, 1941), Sweden (January 17, 1944), Portugal (March 7, 1946), Belgium (January 9, 1948 in Brussels), Denmark (April 15, 1948) . It also ran in Brazil, Spain, Italy and Hungary.

Aftermath

The film was screened again in the United States in the fall of 1997. It was shown in New York, where it was part of the American Romantics: Frank Borzage and Margaret Sullavan program. Frank Borzage and Margaret Sullavan worked together in the 1940 film drama Deadly Storm , one of Hollywood's first anti-fascist films. In Germany, the film was not shown at the time because of a performance ban by Joseph Goebbels . Other films in which Borzage and Sullavan worked together: Little Man What Now (1934), Three Comrades (1938), Burning Fire of Passion (1938).

criticism

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times praised the film for its fearlessness and its difficult subject and judged: It is a story of people that is told in the new Loew Lewin film with great sharpness and sympathy, but it follows one to stare and monotonous narrative form. Jennings documents the miserable lives of his characters too much in his script, and although Cromwell works with a lot of pathos and has drawn individual scenes with great delicacy, the events in the film as a whole were too slow, too solemn and also too boring, since the film is an endless one Two hours long. Crowther comments on the cast that it is great and isolated: Fredric March is quite defiant and, despite all the harshness, also idealistic, Margaret Sullavan is fragile and confused as a Jewish girl, and Glenn Ford as a promising newcomer gives his role a lot of substance and an appealing simplicity.

Nicholas Sheffo of fulvuedrive-in.com found John Cromwell's So Ends Our Night to be one of those intelligent, intense films about the Nazis and their attempt to take over and destroy the world that shed light on the dark side of human nature. Glenn Ford is particularly good in his role as Ludwig Kern, son of a Jewish mother and an Aryan father. Erich von Stroheim is strong in his role as a Nazi. Talbot Jennings adapting the script to the template is intelligent, sensitive, insightful and honest. Unfortunately, the audience did not get the film as it should have, perhaps it was too real for the rest of the world.

On dvdbeaver.com it was read that the film might have done better at the box office if it had been released a few months after the US entered the war. Also Rare film see it that way and added another aspect. The Nazis are clearly the villains in this film, but since it was made before America's entry into the war, Adolf Hitler is not mentioned in the film, which suggests the assumption that they did not want to lose the foreign markets if possible.

Also Letterboxd took this view, spoke of a gentle, poetic adaptation of Remarque's novel, a great Fredric March and an output of Frances Dee, the place of Margaret Sullavan in the shadows that are already in the 1940 released film drama Deadly storm had occurred , one of John Cromwell's favorite films. Among his own films, this film is one of the most underrated American films of the 1940s.

Thrilling Days of Yesterday went in the same direction, which also said that Hollywood was reluctant to scare off its lucrative European film market too much by calling things by name. There was also the opinion that America was simply not ready for such a film at the time of the premiere of the film, which is often terrifyingly dark and pessimistic. Again, the tendency was that Ford was first class in one of its early roles and was very well supported by Sullavan, who always shines in her roles. The interrogation scene of Ford and Erich von Stroheim, which is fascinating, was also highlighted. But the real highlight of the film is the market scene, in which March, in his role as Steiner, sees his wife Marie, played by Frances Dee, one last time before he leaves the country. Dee is great, the fear that is reflected in her face is palpable.

Glenn Erickson also pointed out that the American audience was not ready for the film The Fruits of Wrath starring John Ford and showed just as little interest in John Cromwell's pessimistic film So Ends Our Night . When the film was released, America was still ten months away from entering the war and films that addressed the bad situation in Europe were not very popular with Americans.

CH from the Film Museum noted: “The fact that Paris appears as a safe haven in this Remarque adaptation also shows how hard So Ends Our Night - as a serious Hollywood portrayal of the situation in Europe and the exile experience - sailed on the winds of time: Zur France had long since capitulated the film's premiere. In addition to the proto-noir scenes from a Vienna in which nobody is to be trusted, the inimitable Erich von Stroheim impresses as a practical-thinking and inconsiderate Gestapo agent: the man you love to hate. "

Kino im Kasten found that Erich Maria Remarque's novel Love Your Neighbors with So Ends Our Night received a cinematic accolade, "which even today [carries] terrifying topicality". The soundtrack of the proto-noir film also deserves “special attention”.

Award

Louis Gruenberg , a friend of Arnold Schönberg and Jascha Heifetz , a student at the Vienna Conservatory, was nominated for an Oscar at the Academy Awards in 1942 in the category “Best Film Music in a Drama” , but it went to Bernard Herrmann and the fantasy film Der Teufel und Daniel Webster (The Devil and Daniel Webster) left.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So Ends Our Night (1941) Screenplay Info at TCM - Turner Classic Movies (English)
  2. ↑ So Ends Our Night at st.kp.yandex.net
  3. ↑ So Ends Our Night at deutsches-filminstitut.de
  4. ↑ a b So Ends Our Night (1941) Notes at TCM (English)
  5. ↑ a b Jill Watts: Hattie McDaniel - Black Ambition, White Hollywood. Publisher: Amistad, 2007 (English)
  6. ^ A b Bosley Crowther : 'So Ends Our Night', a Tragic Story of Refugees, at the Music Hall In: The New York Times . February 28, 1941 (English). Retrieved January 26, 2017.
  7. ↑ Asi acaba nuestra noche Spanish movie poster
  8. ↑ Cosi Finisce La Nostra Notte , Italian movie poster
  9. ↑ So Ends Our Night (1941) Miscellaneous Notes at TCM (English)
  10. ↑ a b So Ends Our Night (1941) at letterboxd.com (English)
  11. ↑ So Ends Our Night at fulvuedrive-in.com (English)
  12. ↑ So Ends Our Night at dvdbeaver.com (English) with various film posters and pictures from the film
  13. ↑ So Ends Our Night (1941), war drama at rarefilm.net (English)
  14. ↑ March-in-March: So Ends Our Night (1941) at thrillingdaysofyesteryear.blogspot.de (English)
  15. ↑ Glenn Erickson: So Ends Our Night at dvtdtalk.com (English)
  16. ↑ So Ends Our Night (1941) at filmmuseum.at. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
  17. ↑ So Ends Our Night at kino-im-kasten.de. Retrieved January 26, 2017.