Heimkehr

I am a fan of Lars Hanson and when I found a copy of this movie of his in a private collection I decided to buy it even though I was told the print was only of fair quality. As it happened, the print was pretty poor, but, it was good enough to see what a marvellous movie this is. It is the story of two German prisoners of War in the First world War, who have spent two years running a ferry in a remote part of Siberia. Richard (Hanson) is desperately homesick and longs to see his wife, Anna (Dita Parlo) again. Escape from where they are is considered near impossible and those who have tried and failed are returned to work in the lead mines. Richard and his companion Karl (Frohlich) attempt to escape, however Richard is recaptured, but, Karl makes it back to Hamburg and decides to see Anna, of whom Richard has told him all about. Initially they are friends, but, it slowly deepens into something more, though neither does anything about it. In the meantime the war has ended and Richard is free to return home. I will leave the synopsis at this point, but, what I will say is that it was an excellent film, typical of the German cinema in the late silent days, well acted and imaginatively filmed. I would dearly love a decent print of this to be found and remastered and released for a wider audience as it is a gem of a movie as are many movies from the silent era that languish unloved and forgotten while bilious tripe made more recently is readily available.

Jut to correct another reviewer's comment. Lars Hanson is in fact Swedish not German. He was one of the top theatrical actors in Sweden for many years and made several Swedish films with a very young Ingrid Bergman.