When Douglas Sirk (born Detlef Sierck) left Nazi Germany in 1937 to begin a new career as an unknown in Hollywood, he had already established himself as a leading director in the German film industry with nine feature films made for UFA in the two previous years. To his often melodramatic material, Sirk brought the highly cultivated, extremely critical sensibility he had exercised as a left-wing theater director in the Twenties. But, as he was to do in his stylish Hollywood melodramas (Imitation of Life, All that Heaven Allows, etc.), Sirk set his German films in such deceptive lavishness that his searing and systematic demystification of the melodrama went largely unnoticed by the movie audience.
The four German Sirks in this retrospective (see also February 2, 3 and 11), still not in distribution in this country, are presented in association with the British Film Institute.
