April, April! (1935) User Reviews

Douglas Sirk's debut is a Lubitsch

[Segalen1911 · 8/10 · 25 July 2002]

A very pleasant surprise, this UFA-comedy and Sirk's first film. No surprises in the script--apart from the ones intended by the script writers--but a story that is cleverly constructed around the gap of knowledge between the viewer and the characters. The story's central formula (expected visitor does not come, replacement is found, both show up in the end and confusion follows) has been tested before: 'It's a boy' (1933) with Edward Everett Horton, uses a similar procedure with good effect, and there must be other films playing on such character switches. It's simple, but it works.

The acting is generally very good, also in the supporting parts. It is interesting to see some pre-talkies mannerisms, especially in the older actors. The Lampe family and their littleness recalls the Strabel family in Ernst Lubitsch' 'Heaven Can Wait' (1943), also aspiring to social recognition and nobility, and equally unable to disguise their 'industrial' background.

All in all, a very enjoyable film, which in no way announces Sirk's later melodrama's: flippant, light, formulaic perhaps, but fine cinema.

Douglas Sirk's film debut.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 8/10 · 30 September 2018]

Recently seeing the magnificent A Time To Live and A Time To Die,I decided to take a look at the other credits of auteur Douglas Sirk. With Sirk's last film Time To Live being the first I've seen by him, I felt very lucky to stumble on a new version of his debut with English subtitles, which led to me going out to the April shower.

View on the film:

Making feature films a year after his short intro (1934's Zwei Genies) directing auteur Douglas Sirk collaborates with cinematographer Willy Winterstein in sketching out his future motifs with remarkable clarity. Bringing two societies at the opposing sides of the spectrum (factory workers and royals) Sirk (who remade this with director Jacques van Tol as the now lost 't Was één April) treats the women factory workers like royalty in pristine close-ups that would later frame Sirk's "Women's Pictures." Keeping the comedy atmosphere cheeky and bubbly, Sirk delights with visual gags at Lampe's attempts to impress the prince round his factory, and the regal romantic escapades taking place under Lampe's noodle.

Triggering Lampe with a prank of a royal visit, the screenplay by H.W. Litschke & Rudo Ritter takes playful, satirical jabs at those in high society of the newly ended Weimar Republic. who see themselves as royalty, with the real prince only meeting the workers when he sees his visit plastered in the press. Wisely not going too heavy on the satirical, the writers cook the noodles with a sweet Romantic Comedy heart, whisk from Lampe single-mindedness to get his daughter married to the prince, unaware "the prince" is a fake. Bossing everyone in his factory around, Erhard Siedel gives a hilarious, blustering performance as Lampe, whose royal plans gets tied in noodles.

Amazingly accomplished film from debutant Sirk

[tentender · 7 December 2005]

For a rank beginner (albeit one with extensive and important theatrical experience) this is a remarkably accomplished film. One realizes on seeing Sirk's better early films (among which I would include, along with this, "Das Hofkonzert") is that from the beginning he was prodigally inventive in niceties of framing and camera movement. Here there is one bit of framing that I've never seen elsewhere: the camera is placed at a very low angle, so that we see not only a telephone in the foreground but the ceiling of the room. The phone rings, and into the frame rises the person answering the phone, as if she's coming up from a deep hole. And when she hangs up, she sinks back into it! The actual meaning of this shot might be debated, but its inventiveness is quite striking. Very fine cast, particularly the Gene Lockhart-like actor in the role of the pasta manufacturer. (Also a fine print from the F.W. Murnau archive, which has provided many of the early films for the Sirk retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise.)