Aprile, Aprile

A very pleasant surprise, this UFA-comedy and Sirk's first film. No surprises in the script--apart from the ones intended by the script writers--but a story that is cleverly constructed around the gap of knowledge between the viewer and the characters. The story's central formula (expected visitor does not come, replacement is found, both show up in the end and confusion follows) has been tested before: 'It's a boy' (1933) with Edward Everett Horton, uses a similar procedure with good effect, and there must be other films playing on such character switches. It's simple, but it works.

The acting is generally very good, also in the supporting parts. It is interesting to see some pre-talkies mannerisms, especially in the older actors. The Lampe family and their littleness recalls the Strabel family in Ernst Lubitsch' 'Heaven Can Wait' (1943), also aspiring to social recognition and nobility, and equally unable to disguise their 'industrial' background.

All in all, a very enjoyable film, which in no way announces Sirk's later melodrama's: flippant, light, formulaic perhaps, but fine cinema.

For a rank beginner (albeit one with extensive and important theatrical experience) this is a remarkably accomplished film. One realizes on seeing Sirk's better early films (among which I would include, along with this, "Das Hofkonzert") is that from the beginning he was prodigally inventive in niceties of framing and camera movement. Here there is one bit of framing that I've never seen elsewhere: the camera is placed at a very low angle, so that we see not only a telephone in the foreground but the ceiling of the room. The phone rings, and into the frame rises the person answering the phone, as if she's coming up from a deep hole. And when she hangs up, she sinks back into it! The actual meaning of this shot might be debated, but its inventiveness is quite striking. Very fine cast, particularly the Gene Lockhart-like actor in the role of the pasta manufacturer. (Also a fine print from the F.W. Murnau archive, which has provided many of the early films for the Sirk retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise.)