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Brennendes Geheimnis
1933 Comedy / Drama
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Credits
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Director: Robert Siodmak
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Script: Frederick Kohner, Stefan Zweig (story)
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Photo: Richard Angst
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Music: Allan Gray
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Cast: Willi Forst (Herr von Haller),
Hans Joachim Schaufuss (Edgar),
Lucie Höflich (Mutter),
Hans Richter (Fritz),
Alfred Abel (Der Mann),
Rina Marsa (Lilo de La Roche),
Hilde Wagener (Die Frau vom Burgtheater),
Lotte Stein (Frau Klappholz),
Ernst Dumcke (Baron Tosse)
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Country: Germany
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Language: German
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Runtime: 90 min; B&W
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Aka: The Burning Secret; Fin de saison
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Summary
One autumn, Edgar, a 12 year old boy, spends a holiday with his mother at a plush hotel
in Switzerland. His father, a busy lawyer, remains at the family home in Vienna.
When he sees a stylish motorcar pull up at the hotel, Edgar wastes no time befriending
its owner, an amiable dandy. The latter pays more attention to the boy’s mother
than to the boy himself, and decides to use Edgar to wheedle his way into her affections.
When Edgar realises he has been used, he is far from happy...
Review
Brennendes Geheimnis is the last film that Robert
Siodmak made in Germany before the Nazis came to power, forcing him to leave the country
and pursue his filmmaking career elsewhere (first France, then America). Siodmak
is best known for his atmospheric film noir thrillers and dramas, whereas this is quite
a different kind of film - a poignant coming-of-age drama, with a striking realism and
intimacy, lightened by a few musical interludes and some deliciously tongue-in-cheek
comedy.
Adapted from a story by Stefan Zweig, the film recounts a teenage boy’s painful first
steps towards adulthood. The certainties of childhood, the boy’s absolute confidence
in grown-ups, his firm belief in the goodness of the world, are brutally shaken when he
realises he is complicit in his mother’s adultery. Siodmak captures brilliantly
not just the humour of the situation (as seen by an adults), but also the tragic dimension
(as experienced by the boy). There’s also a stunning, and actually rather sinister,
dream sequence mid-way through the film in which the director pays homage to German expressionism
of the 1920s.
Brennendes Geheimnis is
one of the Siodmak’s most poetic and engaging films, exploring the frailties of human
nature with genuine compassion, insight and more than a touch of irony. The psychology
is very sophisticated for a film of this era, with a daringly subversive subtext that
suggests Edgar's future emotional life could be very traumatic indeed. It's
revealing that Edgar is less hurt by his mother's betrayal than by the fact that the stranger
he has come to idolise should prefer his mother's company to his. It’s not too hard
to see why the Nazis decided to ban the film.
The part of Edgar was played (with
great charm and conviction) by 14 year old Hans Joachim Schaufuss, a talented young actor
who would doubtless have had a glittering career - had he not been killed in action on
the Eastern Front during the Second World War, aged 22.
In 1988, Faye Dunaway
starred in a British remake, Burning Secret,
directed by Andrew Birkin.
© James Travers 2007
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