Series Site
While Robert Siodmak remains best known for his excellent suspense thrillers of the 1940s, such as his 1946 Burt Lancaster vehicle The Killers, the scope of Siodmak’s art is much bigger than noir, as this overdue series illustrates. German-born, his career began in Berlin with the landmark independent slice-of-life drama People on Sunday (1929)—a collaboration with Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, and other later luminaries. This preceded his immigration to the US, and a Hollywood tour that produced camp fantasias (1944’s Cobra Woman), high-flying swashbucklers (1952’s The Crimson Pirate), and of course those ultra-stylish thrillers—all of which can be seen alongside Siodmak’s 1957 The Devil Strikes at Night, his second film made on returning to West Germany, and a riveting reckoning with the legacy of the Third Reich.