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25th September 1928: American comic actor Buster Keaton (1895 - 1966) wearing a baseball strip and boots. (Photo by John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
Veit Harlan, the actor-turned-director behind 1943's Immensee and 1944's Opfergang, aka The Great Sacrifice, was a master of melodrama whose films found great favor during World War II. Aside from the fact that he made them under the auspices of The Third Reich, which had taken over the German film industry, the decline of his reputation over the ensuing decades rests primarily on his authorship of the 1940s virulently anti-Semitic historical drama Jud Süss.
If the diptych in this Kino set compares favorably to the work of Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Harlan's Nazi associations can't be completely ignored, though these restored films deserve to be seen and appreciated for their aesthetic qualities, not least because they're devoid of any harmful stereotypes.
Both star Carl Raddatz, who bears an uncanny resemblance to French actor Mathieu Amalric, and Harlan's blonde, blue-eyed, Swedish-born wife, Kristina Söderbaum, famed as "the ideal German woman" (she also appears in Jud Süss). He begins Immensee, an adaptation of Theodor Storm's 1849 novel, with a symphonic concert in Hamburg conducted by Raddatz's Reinhardt. Dressed in widow's weeds, Söderbaum's Elisabeth watches from the audience, visibly moved. After the two reconnect, the action shifts to their days as young sweethearts in the idyllic countryside.
As much as he loves cavorting in the waterlily-strewn lake with Elisabeth, Reinhardt has his heart set on a music career, so he leaves town to train as a conductor, the first of several separations that allow Erich (Paul Klinger) —a more steadfast admirer—to win her heart. The love triangle configuration continues in The Great Sacrifice, an adaptation of Rudolf G. Binding's 1912 novel, as Raddatz's Albrecht marries the beautiful and sophisticated Octavia (Irene von Meyendorff, a real-life baroness) whose old-money family spends Sunday afternoons listening to mournful Chopin pieces and reading gloomy Nietzsche passages.
When Albrecht catches a glimpse of vivacious neighbor Älskling (Söderbaum), an archery enthusiast with a herd of dogs, he starts spending more time with her than his wife, oblivious to the fact that she harbors a tragic secret. Both films reinforce the bonds of matrimony but don't necessarily condemn those who find them constricting. The Great Sacrifice proves the more adventurous effort, particularly an extended sequence at a masked ball and the penultimate scene in which Albrecht and Äls communicate telepathically as a heavenly chorus swirls around them. Though Harlan was considered a favorite of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister dismissed the film as "sentimental and obvious."
The commentary tracks from film critics Olaf Möller on Immensee and Alexander Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson on The Great Sacrifice focus extensively on Harlan, a "widely beloved" and "super-successful director," in Möller's words, who would nonetheless be tried twice for crimes against humanity due to his propaganda work. He was acquitted both times, and in the 1980s, two decades after his death, his work would experience a resurgence of interest due to his facility with color and emotion. As Möller, an avowed admirer, concludes, Veit Harlan was “a very complicated figure.” Recommended for classic and German film collections. Film studies professors teaching courses in melodrama should also consider this title.