Film Review: Douglas Sirk – Hope As in Despair
by Becky Tan

DOUGLAS SIRK – HOPE AS IN DESPAIR
Roman Hüben, Switzerland, France, Germany 2022

In this documentary we learn much about the life of German film and theater director Hans Detlef Sierck. In 1929 he married “the love of his life,” Hilde Jary. She was Jewish, which was one reason they left their home when the Nazis took control. They couldn’t just hide, because his first wife Lydia, a loyal Nazi, willingly shared his location with the authorities. She also kept their mutual son, Klaus Detlef, away from his father, so that Sierck had no contact. Goebbels bought out the UFA Film Company and as a result many of the German directors and producers quit working there. Sierck stayed a bit longer, but eventually he and Hilde moved to New York and then to Hollywood, where he changed his name to Douglas Sirk and struggled to learn English. His favorite American sentence was, “Take it easy.” They lived in a small house in the countryside tending 600 chickens. He continued making films, now in Hollywood.

Included are trailers from several of his over 40 films, including A TIME TO LOVE AND A TIME TO DIE, which was filmed in Germany in 1958.Viewers believe that he created characters from the original book by Erich Maria Remarque, which reflect his son Klaus and his wife Hilde. We learn more with commentary by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rock Hudson (who was the same age as Sirk’s son), Hanna Schygulla, etc. There are beautiful scenes of his neighborhood in Lugano, Switzerland, where he retired and died in 1987.