Preceded by: German newsreel, April 24, 1939 (Ufa-Tonwoche #451/1939). A showpiece film showing the celebration of Hitler's 50th birthday (April 20) including a military parade. (20.5 mins, Written English translation, B&W) (Der Schritt vom Wege). Fontane's tale of a woman who forsakes respectability and obligation in the name of personal happiness indicts the strict codes of an unbending Prussian order. Director Gustaf Gründgens, at once an opportunist and-as a bisexual-an outsider, could stress Effi's lust for life, but could not ignore her act of adultery. For contemporary critics, party logic dictated that the tragic figure had to be the betrayed officer-husband. In her performance as Effi, however, Marianne Hoppe (Gründgens's spouse in real life) was so animated and engagingly sympathetic that one had no problem understanding why she steps off the beaten track. The film represented a challenge for Nazi observers, above all due to its domestic politics. As one commentator put it: "One surely does not have to justify why in Adolf Hitler's Reich the family provides the untouchable driving force in the national community's outer and inner workings."-E.R.