Brennendes Geheimnis (1933)
Directed by Robert Siodmak

Film Review

Brennendes Geheimnis is the last film that director Robert Siodmak made in Germany before the Nazis came to power, forcing him to leave the country and pursue his filmmaking career elsewhere. After a busy half-decade in France, in which he made a number of interesting films - La Crise est finie (1934), Pièges (1939) - he moved on to Hollywood, where he made some of his best works - The Spiral Staircase (1945), Cry of the City (1948). Brennendes Geheimnis is very different from the moody noir thrillers and dramas that Siomak is best-known for (The Killers). It is a poignant coming-of-age drama, filmed with a striking realism and intimacy, lightened by a few musical interludes and some delightfully tongue-in-cheek comedy.

Adapted from a story by Stefan Zweig, the film recounts a teenage boy's painful first steps towards adulthood.  The certainties of childhood, the boy's absolute confidence in grown-ups, his firm belief in the goodness of the world, are brutally shaken when he realises he is complicit in his mother's adultery.  Siodmak captures brilliantly not just the humour of the situation (as seen by an adults), but also the tragic dimension (as experienced by the boy).  There's also a stunning, and actually rather sinister, dream sequence mid-way through the film in which the director pays homage to German expressionism of the 1920s.

Brennendes Geheimnis is one of the Siodmak's most poetic and engaging films, exploring the frailties of human nature with genuine compassion, insight and more than a touch of irony.  The psychology is very sophisticated for a film of this era, with a daringly subversive subtext that suggests Edgar's future emotional life could be very traumatic indeed.   It's revealing that Edgar is less hurt by his mother's betrayal than by the fact that the stranger he has come to idolise should prefer his mother's company to his.  It's not too hard to see why the Nazis decided to ban the film.

The part of Edgar was played (with great charm and conviction) by 14 year old Hans Joachim Schaufuss, a talented young actor who would doubtless have had a glittering career - had he not been killed in action on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, aged 22.

In 1988, Faye Dunaway starred in a British remake, Burning Secret, directed by Andrew Birkin.

Film Synopsis

Whilst his father, a busy lawyer, stays at the family residence in Vienna, a 12-year-old boy name Edgar takes an autumn holiday with his mother in Switzerland.  They stay at a luxury hotel where Edgar befriends a dandy who owns an expensive motorcar.  The dandy is more interested in the boy's mother than the boy himself, and he uses him so that he can worm his devious little way into her affections.  Edgar is a bright lad and soon realises that he has been duped.  As he watches the rich man court his mother he begins to feel jealous and worries that his parents' marriage may be threatened...