Robert Siodmak (; 8 August 1900 – 10 March 1973) was a German film director who also worked in the United States.
He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt directed a film of Siodmak's story Conflict in 1945).
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.
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. 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.
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 career== 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.
He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for a series of stylish, unpretentious Hollywood films noirs he made in the 1940s, such as The Killers (1946). ==Early life== Siodmak was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine (née Blum) and Ignatz Siodmak and the brother of Curt, Werner and Roland.
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 career== 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.
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 career== 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.
He worked as a stage director and a banker before becoming editor and scenarist for Curtis Bernhardt in 1925 (Bernhardt directed a film of Siodmak's story Conflict in 1945).
Released in 1946, it was Burt Lancaster's film debut and Ava Gardner's first dramatic, featured role.
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 and bland Mervyn LeRoy.
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 and bland Mervyn LeRoy.
On loan out to Paramount in 1949, he made for producer Hal B.
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.
He also helped raise Ava Gardner's public profile. ==Return to Europe== Before leaving for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production The Crimson Pirate for Norma Productions (distributed through Warner Bros.) and producer Harold Hecht, his third and last film with Burt Lancaster (Siodmak dubbed the chaotic experience "The Hecht Follies"), Siodmak had directed some of the era's best films noirs (twelve in all), more than any other director who worked in that style.
In 1954 he sued producer Sam Spiegel for copyright infringement.
His contribution to the original screenplay has never been acknowledged. Siodmak's return to Europe in 1954 with a Grand Prize nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his remake of Jacques Feyder's Le grand jeu was a misstep, despite its stars, Gina Lollobrigida (two of them) and Arletty in the role originated by Françoise Rosay, Feyder's wife.
In 1955, Siodmak returned to the Federal Republic of Germany to make Die Ratten, with Maria Schell and Curd Jurgens, winning the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Ruhmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend Hermann Göring.
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 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.
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.
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 was last seen publicly in an interview for Swiss television at his home in Ascona in 1971.
Robert Siodmak (; 8 August 1900 – 10 March 1973) was a German film director who also worked in the United States.
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