Director Frank Borzage’s “Weimar Trilogy” begins here with Margaret Sullavan, the trilogy’s radiant, fragile muse, as one half of a young married couple struggling to make their way in 1930s Germany. Borzage doesn’t shy from depicting the grim realities of a country plunged into economic and, more importantly, spiritual despair, making the film’s sense of humanity all the more moving for being hard won.
Production: Universal Pictures Corp. A Frank Borzage Production. Distribution: Universal Pictures Corp. Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr., Frank Borzage. Director: Frank Borzage. Based on the novel Kleiner Mann, was nun? by Hans Fallada. Screenwriter: William Anthony McGuire. Cinematographer: Norbert Brodine. Art Director: Charles D. Hall. Editor: Milton Carruth. With: Margaret Sullavan, Douglass Montgomery, Alan Hale, Catharine Doucet, DeWitt Jennings. 35mm, b/w, 98 min.
