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March 24, 2022

Farewell

Abschied
Robert Siodmak - 1930
Kino Classics BD Region A

The full title is the unwieldy Abschied - Ernstes und Heiteres aus einer Familienpension. The Google translation is "Farewell - serious and cheerful from a family pension", the pension in this case being a boarding house where the film takes place.

Farewell has forced me to consider that Robert Siodmak still is, as Andrew Sarris might put it, a subject for further research. Most discussion about the director is centered on a dozen American films made between 1944 (Phantom Lady) and 1950 (Deported). That's twelve films in a filmography that lists sixty-two directorial credits per IMDb. Until recently, the only available pre-Hollywood film available was People on Sunday, a collaborative effort. Siodmak's last theatrical film to get significant distribution, Custer of the West was a job for hire, but might also need reconsideration in light of Siodmak's two films prior being adaptations of novels by Karl May, the popular author of an imagined American west beloved by Germans.

If for no other reason, Farewell is of interest as Siodmak's first solo work as a director. The screenplay is an early credit for Emeric Pressburger several years before his more famous collaborations with Michael Powell. The other screen writer, Irma von Cube, worked primarily with Anatole Litvak in his German period. This was the third film for cinematographer Eugen Shufftan who later was rewarded with an Oscar for his work on The Hustler. It should be of little surprise that all four left Germany between 1933 and 1936.

Unlike People on Sunday, Farewell takes place entirely indoors, in the hallway of a boarding house, and in a couple of the boarders' rooms. Peter and Hella are a couple who, if not formally engaged, seem to have an understanding. Their relationship is strained by the news that Peter has been offered a good paying job that requires his leaving Berlin, as well as his suspicions about Hella's fidelity. While Peter and Hella's relationship provides the main drama, the film is more of an ensemble piece with various residents popping in and out of doors. One of the various strands involves the perpetually broke "Baron" played by character actor Vladimir Sokoloff, scheming even for pennies. Also there is composer Erwin Bootz, as a version of himself, noodling on the piano, providing a soundtrack that appears to be diegetic throughout the film.

The German film industry had been working on sound with films and had their own successful system in place by 1929. Siodmak plays with offscreen shouting, the roar of a vacuum cleaner, and the aforementioned piano music. As Anthony Slide points out in his commentary track, naturalism has replaced expressionism, and Siodmak employs a different type of visual stylization. Some of the shots are arranged to force the viewer to observe more than one focal point going from front to back. This is first noticeable in the shot of the hallway with boarders looking out of their respective doors. Later, in a medium shot of a group of boarders, the face of the landlady breaks into the frame from the right as a close-up. That the shooting schedule was reportedly just twelve days and was under the direction of a relative novice suggests that the production company UFA may have viewed Farewell as a low risk test of their new technology.

The blu-ray was sourced from the 2014 digital restoration. Included is the second, tacked on ending, added a year after the initial release, which was done without the consent of the director.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at March 24, 2022 06:55 AM