Pre-war Germany At twenty-six he was hired by his cousin, 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, the silent masterpiece,
Menschen am Sonntag (
People on Sunday) in 1929. The script was co-written by
Billy Wilder and Siodmak's brother
Curt, later the screenwriter of
The Wolf Man (1941). It was the last German silent and also included such future Hollywood artists as
Fred Zinnemann,
Edgar G. Ulmer, and
Eugen Schufftan. His next film—the first at UFA to use sound—was the 1930 comedy
Abschied for writers
Emeric Pressburger and
Irma von Cube, followed by
Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht, another comedy, yet quite different and unusual, a likely product of Billy Wilder's imagination. But in his next film, the crime thriller
Stürme der Leidenschaft, with
Emil Jannings and
Anna Sten, Siodmak found a style that would become his own.
France With the rise of
Nazism and following an attack in the press by Hitler's minister of propaganda
Joseph Goebbels in 1933 after viewing
Brennendes Geheimnis (
The Burning Secret), Siodmak left Germany for Paris. His creativity flourished, as he worked for the next six years in a variety of film genres, from comedy (
Le sexe faible and
La Vie Parisienne ) to musical (
La crise est finie, with
Danielle Darrieux) to drama (
Mister Flow,
Cargaison blanche,
Mollenard—compare Gabrielle Dorziat's shrewish wife with that of Rosalind Ivan in
The Suspect—and
Pièges, with
Maurice Chevalier and
Erich von Stroheim). While in France, he was well on his way to becoming successor to
Rene Clair, until Hitler again forced him out. Siodmak arrived in
California in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.
Hollywood Beginning in 1941, he first turned out several B-films and programmers for various studios before he gained a seven-year contract with
Universal Studios in 1943. The best of those early films are the thriller
Fly by Night in 1942, with
Richard Carlson and
Nancy Kelly, and in 1943
Someone to Remember, with Mable Paige in a signature role. As house director, his services were often used to salvage troublesome productions at the studio. On Mark Hellinger's production
Swell Guy (1946), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace
Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on
The Killers. Siodmak worked steadily while under contract, overshadowed by high-profile directors, like
Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had been often compared by the press. At Universal, Siodmak made yet another B-film,
Son of Dracula (1943), the third in the studio's series of Dracula movies (based on his brother
Curt's original story). His second feature was the
Maria Montez/
Jon Hall vehicle,
Cobra Woman (1944), made in
Technicolor. His first all-out noir was
Phantom Lady (1944), for staff producer
Joan Harrison, Universal's first female executive and
Alfred Hitchcock's former secretary and script assistant. It showcased Siodmak's skill with camera and editing to dazzling effect, but no more so than in the iconic jam-session sequence with
Elisha Cook Jr. in throes on the drums. Following the critical success of
Phantom Lady, Siodmak directed
Christmas Holiday (1944) with
Deanna Durbin and
Gene Kelly (
Hans J. Salter received an Oscar nomination for best music). Beginning with this film, his work in Hollywood attained the stylistic and thematic characteristics that are evident in his later noirs.
Christmas Holiday, adapted from a
W. Somerset Maugham novel of the same title by
Herman J. Mankiewicz, was Durbin's most successful feature. Siodmak's use of black-and-white cinematography and urban landscapes, together with his light-and-shadow designs, followed the basic structure of classic noir films. In fact, he had a number of collaborations with cinematographers, such as
Nicholas Musuraca,
Elwood Bredell, and
Franz Planer, in which he achieved the Expressionist look he had cultivated in his early years at UFA. During Siodmak's tenure, Universal made the most of the noir style in
The Suspect,
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and
The Dark Mirror, but the capstone was
The Killers. Released in 1946, it was
Burt Lancaster's film debut and
Ava Gardner's first dramatic, featured role. A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood. His German production
Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam, based on the false story of
Bruno Lüdke, who was falsely accused of being a serial killer by the Nazis, was nominated for
Best Foreign Language Film in 1957. While still under contract at Universal, Siodmak worked on loan out to
RKO for producer
Dore Schary in the thriller
The Spiral Staircase, a masterly blending of suspense and horror, which Siodmak said he edited as he pleased, due to a strike in Hollywood in 1945. The film earned
Ethel Barrymore an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. For
20th Century Fox and producer
Darryl F. Zanuck, he directed, partly on location in New York City, the crime noir
Cry of the City in 1948, and in 1949 for
MGM he tackled its lux production
The Great Sinner, but the prolix script proved unmanageable for Siodmak who relinquished direction to the dependable
Mervyn LeRoy. On loan out to
Paramount in 1949, he made for producer
Hal B. Wallis his penultimate American noir
The File on Thelma Jordon, with
Barbara Stanwyck at her most fatal—and sympathetic. Siodmak saw in this film a thematic link with
The Suspect and
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, with the failed lovers of these films and significantly their tragic conclusions (ten years later he addressed the same theme in
The Rough and the Smooth). Perhaps his finest American noir—although not his last—is
Criss Cross that was to reunite him not only with Lancaster, but also
The Killers producer
Mark Hellinger, who died suddenly before production began in 1949. Working without the hands-on control of Hellinger again, Siodmak was able to make this film his own as he could not the earlier film. Yvonne De Carlo's working-class femme fatal (a high mark in her career) completes the deadly triangle, along with Lancaster and
Dan Duryea: the archetype of doomed attraction central to all Siodmak's noirs, but the one he could fully express to its nihilistic conclusion. Siodmak immersed himself in the creative process and genuinely loved working with actors, acquiring a reputation as an actor's director for his work with many future stars, including Burt Lancaster,
Ernest Borgnine,
Tony Curtis,
Debra Paget,
Maria Schell,
Mario Adorf, Ava Gardner,
Olivia de Havilland,
Dorothy McGuire,
Yvonne de Carlo,
Barbara Stanwyck,
Geraldine Fitzgerald, and
Ella Raines. It was the first in a series of films critical of his homeland, during and after Hitler, which included
Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam, both thriller and social artifact of Germany under Nazi rule, shot in documentary style reminiscent of
Menschen am Sonntag and
Whistle at Eaton Falls, and in 1960,
Mein Schulfreund, an absurdist comedy, dark and strange, with
Heinz Rühmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend
Hermann Göring. In April 1958, Siodmak was made an executive in
Kirk Douglas' film production company
Bryna Productions, as European Representative. Between these films, and
Mein Vater, der Schauspieler in 1956, with
O. W. Fischer (the West German
Rock Hudson), he took a detour into
Douglas Sirk territory with the sordid melodrama,
Dorothea Angermann in 1959, featuring Germany's star
Ruth Leuwerik. Later the same year he left Germany for Great Britain to film
The Rough and the Smooth, with
Nadja Tiller and
Tony Britton, yet another noir, but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America (compare its downbeat ending with that of
The File on Thelma Jordan). He followed with
Katia also in 1959, a tale of Czarist Russia, with twenty-one-year-old
Romy Schneider, mistakenly titled in America
Magnificent Sinner, recalling—unfavorably—Siodmak's other costume melodrama. In 1961, ''
L'affaire Nina B, with Pierre Brasseur and Nadja Tiller (again), returned Siodmak to familiar ground in a slick, black-and-white thriller about a pay-for-hire Nazi hunter, which could be argued was the start of the many spy themed films so popular in the 1960s. In 1962, the entertaining Escape from East Berlin, with Don Murray and Christine Kaufman, had all the characteristic style of a Siodmak thriller, but was one that he later dismissed as something he had made for "little kids in America." His work in Germany returned to programmers like those that had begun his career in Hollywood 23 years earlier. From 1964 to 1965, he made a series of films with former Tarzan Lex Barker: The Shoot, The Treasure of the Aztecs, and The Pyramid of the Sun God'', all taken from the western, adventure novels of
Karl May.
Later career Siodmak's return to Hollywood filmmaking in 1967 with the wide-screen western
Custer of the West was another disappointment, receiving mostly negative reviews from critics and failing to generate box-office appeal. Siodmak ended his career with a six-hour, two-part toga and chariot epic,
Kampf um Rom (1968), a more campy work (perhaps intentionally) than
Cobra Woman had been. There was a brief and profitable foray into television in Great Britain with the series
O.S.S. (1957–58). == Personal life ==