Saw Sirk’s adaptation of Ibsen’s The Pillars of Society last night and thought it excellent. His previous film, The Girl From the Marsh Croft, was also an adaptation from a prestigious source, a novella by Selma Lagerlöf, 1909’s Nobel Laureate . I don’t think Sirk would get to work with material as prestigious until his adaptations of Faulkner and Remarque in the late 50s, though I’m not sure it’s necessarily a loss; I’m just observing that in the mid-thirties Sirk seemed to be working with the best that German Cinema had to offer, not the case for most of his years in Hollywood.

The Pillars of Society looks wonderful, moves well and is moving. It has familiar themes, characteristic of Sirk’s later work in Hollywood: the wish for escape, the feeling of entrapment, the power of rumour, how lies can structure lives, bourgeois hypocrisy and deceit. I was struck by how potent the ‘Cowboys and Indians’ myth in the film is, made more so by being tied to the circus, so there’s a double symbolisation of freedom and escape that is powerful but manages to convey youth and energy whilst not negating murder. The coastal imagery, boats, ship-building, the sea; all looks spectacular and is used to great effect. Ibsen’s ending was thought controversial; this one is perhaps a bit pat but no more so than the average Hollywood film. I liked it very much.