Review by tentender

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.)