Although his brand of exquisite, love-centered melodrama was out of favor during the actual war years, several of Borzage's greatest films of the thirties were poignant evocations of lovers pitted against the conditions that led to the war--the Depression and the rise of Nazism in Germany. An important film in Borzage's career, Little Man, What Now? was the first Hollywood film to deal with the situation in pre-Hitler Germany (although Griffith's Isn't Life Wonderful, made 10 years earlier in 1924, was set in the German depression of the immediate postwar years). Based on the best selling novel by Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now? retains the novel's German setting and stars Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery as provincial newlyweds about to become parents, struggling against unemployment and poverty to create a modicum of domestic peace. Consistent with his theme, Borzage concerns himself more with the spirit of ugly cynicism that threatens the redemptive power of love than he does with physical poverty; however, his lovers are not social isolates. As the surrealist Ado Kyrou points out, “In the troubled political situation of pre-Hitler Germany, Montgomery and Sullavan will find help only amongst the people who suffer and see the spectre of Nazism hovering over them.” Borzage would return to this setting later in Three Comrades (1938) (see May 27) and The Mortal Storm (1940), both starring Margaret Sullavan.