Love, betrayal and tragedy occur one night in a luxury hotel. The years pass, and one fine day finds the protagonists united again. The hotel and several lives are in ruins, and for a decade these people have been living with regrets, hate and unanswered questions in their hearts. And now, things begin to unravel, bringing revelations that are both painful and releasing, bringing peace to many tormented souls.
The German cinema of the post war years was in great danger to be thrown from one extreme to the other. In the films of the Third Reich you can almost never see the ruins or actual war; at the best you get a glimpse of soldiers on home leave. Since 1946, the "ruin-films" were produced, and for the next 5 or so years the cinema seemed to be eager to make even for what it had failed to say during the period it was only serving entertainment purposes. Plus, it sometimes went to great length to prove (to the Russian and American censors) that things were definitely not what they seemed. The reaction is understandable and expectable, but it often produced very heavy and humorless films with the tendency to grovel in remorse - generally acceptable as a concept, but making a tiresome watching. And then there was another turn - by 1950 there emerged a new, intolerably optimistic, carefree and plain stupid kind of comedy, which was light years away from the sophistication and decadence of the Nazi cinema. We have to keep in mind, that German film now had to provide entertainment to the millions of ex-enemies, the people in the Soviet Union.
Between Yesterday And Tomorrow is a film which is pure in its integrity, standing somewhere in between the old and the new, incorporating the best elements of the bygone and the yet to come. The title really works as a prophecy. You get the melancholy romance and occasionally the optimism of a ruin-film, and the visual perfection of an old school German melodrama. You get all the giants of the Nazi cinema in one film, the superstars who drew millions into the theatres in spite of the falling bombs. Victor Staal, Willy Birgel, Wiktor de Kowa, Sybille Schmitz and Winnie Markus all give solid, troubled, sensitive performances, in many cases the best performances of their lives. Soon the style was to change for ever, and these actors and the types they represented belonged to the past. Then there's the new face of the German cinema, legendary Hildegard Knef, a woman of mystery - the personal pet of Göbbels, a fierce fighter in the uniform during the battle for Berlin, the POW. All this happened before she was even 20. It was her fortune that even though she made her screen debut in 1944 (being very effective in a short feature "The Actor's School" which was the one that caught Göbbels' eye), the few films she did before the end of the War were screened only after May 1945, so she effectively became the first new star of the post-war cinema.
The motive of remorse and Nazi atrocities are touched very delicately and yet very realistically. US and SU filmmakers never seem to understand that a crime against a person, committed with white gloves and a smile upon the perpetrator's lips, is much crueler than the same crime accompanied by shouting, screaming and barking of the dogs. Here we are shown a delicate Jewish actress being cornered - virtually sentenced to death - by three polite gentlemen, and the result is much more horrifying than a familiar scene from countless films where the Nazis are depicted stupid, loud-mouthed barbarians who are effective only in the basest level of producing fear. The scenes with Sybille Schmitz are the more disturbing, when one knows that she is far from acting and her own life would reflect the film in many aspects. In spite of working in may Nazi propaganda films, she was reportedly of Jewish origin. Her unreal, ethereal appearance that was always shrouded in the air of unpretentious tragedy and perdition, didn't fit in the "new look". She gradually lost work and money, became dependent on drugs, and committed suicide only a few years after her on screen suicide in Between Yesterday and Tomorrow. All this makes her desperate, fragile performance painful to watch.
This absorbing film has often been compared to The Grand Hotel, but in fact it's much deeper and much more tragic. Everything about this film seems to be perfect - the actors, the camera work, and the way the complicated story is presented in different flashbacks, giving the film a very modern structure. The lightning is beautiful, there are some posh costumes and a very good swing band performing in the night club. A work of poetry with strong touch of realism and little or no sentimental manipulation.
