Happy Birthday, Robert Siodmak (which he insisted, be pronounced 'See-odd-mack')! Born today in 1900, this German film director had also worked in the United States.
Born in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, his parents were both from Jewish families in Leipzig.
This was the beginning of the myth regarding his American birth in Memphis, Tennessee. Because of this, it was necessary for Siodmak to obtain a visa in Paris, France during World War II.
He later worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for German film director Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt would direct a film of Siodmak's story Conflict in 1945).
At twenty-six, Siodmak was hired by his cousin, American-born, Jewish-German film producer Seymour Nebenzal, to assemble original silent movies from stock footage of old films.
Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature. This was the 1930 German silent black and white drama film 'Menschen am Sonntag' ('People on Sunday').
Siodmak, Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother German-American novelist and screenwriter Curt co-wrote the film. Edgar G. Ulmer co-produced (but went uncredited) and co-directed, alongside Robert. Fred Zinnemann was assistant to German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan.
Years later, he co-wrote the screenplay of American actor, director, producer and writer George Waggner's 1941 American black and white horror/monster drama film 'The Wolf Man'.
This was the last German silent film, and also included such future Hollywood artists such as Zinnemann, Ulmer and Schüfftan.
Siodmak's next film—the first from the German motion-picture production company Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft (UFA) to use sound—was co-written by Emeric Pressburger. This was for the 1930 German black and white drama/comedy 'Abschied' ('Farewell')
In his 1932 German black and white crime/thriller film 'Stürme der Leidenschaft' ('Storms of Passion'), Siodmak found a style that would later become his own.
With the rise of Nazism and following an attack in the press by Adolph Hitler's German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Siodmak left Germany for Paris.
This was after Goebbels viewed his 1933 Austrian-German black and white drama film 'Brennendes Geheimnis' ('The Burning Secret').
While in Paris, Siodmak's creativity there flourished, and he worked for the next six years in a variety of film genres.
In the late 1930s, Siodmak directed the 1939 French drama thriller/romance film 'Pièges' ('Personal Column'). It starred Maurice Chevalier and Austrian-American director, actor and producer Erich Von Stroheim.
While in France, Siodmak was well on his way to becoming successor to French filmmaker and writer René Clair. This was until Hitler again forced him out.
Later in 1939, Siodmak arrived in California. While there, he made twenty-three films, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas which critics today regard as classics of film noir.
Beginning in 1941, Siodmak first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with Universal Studios two years later in 1943.
At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film. This was the 1943 American black and white horror film 'Son of Dracula', the third in the studio's series of the Dracula film franchise (based off of his brother Curt's original story).
Siodmak's second feature was the Maria Montez (known as The Queen of Technicolor) and American actor Jon Hall vehicle. This was the 1944 American Technicolor South Seas adventure/fantasy film 'Cobra Woman'.
Two years later, Siodmak was brought in to replace Hollywood film director and writer Frank Tuttle. This was only just six days after completing work on the feature of which Siodmak is best known for directing.
This was the 1946 American black and white noir/crime film 'The Killers' (also known as 'A Man Alone'). An uncredited John Huston and American screenwriter, film director, novelist and film producer Richard Brooks co-wrote the screenplay.
The film had been based on Ernest Hemingway's titular 1927 short story published in Scribner's Magazine.
Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede" (Burt Lancaster). When the killers find Ole 'Swede' Anderson, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight.
Since the Swede had a life insurance policy, investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien), on a hunch, decides to look into the murder.
As the Swede's past is laid bare, it comes to light that he was in love with a beautiful woman named Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner). This may have lured him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man named Big Jim Colfax (Albert Dekker).
Although a neglected screen classic, 'The Killers' is an intense, hard-edged, stylish film noir of robbery, unrequited love, brutal betrayal and double-cross.
Hemingway, who was habitually disgusted with how Hollywood distorted his thematic intentions, was a fan of the film, stating that "It is a good picture and the only good picture ever made of a story of mine."
'The Killers' was Lancaster's film debut and Gardner's first dramatic, featured role. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood. This occurred at the 19th Academy Awards in mid-March 1947.
In the early 1960s, Don Siegel directed the 1964 American Eastman Color neo noir/crime drama film ‘The Killers’. It was released in the United Kingdom as ‘Ernest Hemingway's 'The Killers'. The film was written by American screenwriter, television producer and novelist Gene L. Coon.
It is the second Hollywood adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story of the same name, following the 1946 version. It starred Lee Marvin, Angie Dickenson, John Cassavetes and Ronald Reagan.
Siegel's ‘The Killers’ holds a rating of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes based on twenty-four reviews with the consensus.
It says: "Though it can't best Robert Siodmak's classic 1946 version, Don Siegel's take on the Ernest Hemingway story stakes out its own violent territory, and offers a terrifically tough turn from Lee Marvin.”
Siodmak is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish, unpretentious Hollywood films noirs he made in the 1940s. He was a man of contradictions. Some were of his own devising others were thrust upon him.
American film critic Andrew Sarris reckoned that Siodmak's features made in the United States were more Germanic than his German ones.
Still, others feuded over whether he was an auteur who helped define film noir or a studio hack whose work was decidedly mediocre when not abetted by quality craftsmen.
Moreover, while Siodmak was feted in some quarters as the new Alfred Hitchcock or Fritz Lang, he was appreciated in others as a master of kitsch.
In 2008, 'The Killers' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In April and May 2015., the British Film Institute (BFI) held a retrospective of Siodmak's career.
Siodmak is also known for directing 'Phantom Lady' (1944), 'The Spiral Staircase' (1946), 'Cry of the City' (1948), 'Criss Cross' (1949), and 'The Crimson Pirate' (1952).
Siodmak was a masterful filmmaker who successfully blended the techniques of German Expressionism with contemporary styles of American film, particularly film noir, in the process creating a handful of moody, sometimes chilling, and always memorable motion pictures.
Siodmak had been active from 1928–1969.
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