Robert Siodmak - Return To Europe

Return To Europe

Before leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production The Crimson Pirate for Warner Bros., his third and last film with Burt Lancaster, Siodmak had directed some of the era's best film noirs, more than any other director who worked in that genre, twelve in all. But his identification with film noir, generally unpopular with American audiences, may have been more of a curse than a blessing.

He often expressed his desire to make pictures "of a different type and background" than the ones he had been making for ten years. Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing Deported (1951) which he filmed partly abroad (Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films).

Those "different types" of films he had made - The Great Sinner (1949) for MGM, Time Out of Mind (1947) for Universal (which Siodmak also produced), The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951) for Columbia Pictures - all proved ill suited to his noir sensibilities (although The Crimson Pirate, despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasant departure).

The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled A Stone in the River Hudson, an early version of On the Waterfront was also a major disappointment for Siodmak. In 1954 he sued producer Sam Spiegel for copyright infringement. Siodmak was awarded $100,000, but no screen credit. His contribution to the original screenplay has never been acknowledged.

After returning to the Federal Republic of Germany, he made The Rats (Die Ratten) which went on to win the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival, and The Devil Came at Night (Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam, 1957) which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and is based on the true story of Bruno Lüdke.