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Ibsen via Ufa means a Teutonic eye on Nordic drama, Douglas Sirk begins by imagining California as a chummy cowboy ranch complete with "Swanee River" sung in German. (The New York City simulacrum that opens The Final Chord naturally follows suit.) The Norwegian flag drops to unveil a marble bust of the consul (Heinrich George) to unimpressed proles, his wife (Maria Krahn) is head prig while their son (Horst Teetzmann) dreams of the Wild West, warbonnet and tomahawk and all. The brother-in-law (Albrecht Schoenhals) returns after two decades in America and wonders, "how to get those pretentious people angry?" Ride into town at the head of the circus caravan, that's how, a top-hatted local has a name for this, "skandal." Business in the shipyard is part of the pretense of respectability, sometimes it takes a storm to expose the weakness and shame underneath. Swanky reception and big-top premiere in the same night, swells and biddies versus clowns and seals, a characteristic Sirk formulation. Reputations and confessions, the black sheep who turns out to be a scapegoat. Meanwhile, the illegitimate daughter (Suse Graf) yearns for "a place where there's no society." An alliance to early Hitchcock (The Skin Game, say) is visible, roisterous sailors and their accusatory songs lend a dash of Brecht picked up by Ophüls in Komedie om Geld. "Thus are the masters of great houses." The old vessel is tossed by a tempest, cf. Cukor's David Copperfield, the new one is baptized "Bright Future." With Oskar Sima, Hansjoachim Büttner, Karl Dannemann, Walther Süssenguth, Paul Beckers, and Franz Weber. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |