Schlussakkord ("Final Chord") is a 1936 film from Germany (so, yep, Nazi Germany) directed by Detlef Sierck. Soon after Sierck would emigrate to America and anglicize his name to Douglas Sirk.
The film opens in New York, with the suicide of a German national named Christian Mueller. Mueller's wife Hanna had hastily left the country with her husband because he was about to be arrested for embezzlement. Worse, they had to leave their little boy Peter behind, and he is now in an orphanage. With no more reason to stay in America, Hanna goes back to Germany to reclaim her son.
Cut to Erich Garvenberg, a well-known German orchestra conductor. Erich thinks he is happily married, but his wife Charlotte is actually cheating on him. Erich happens to know the doctor at the orphanage where Peter is an inmate. Erich adopts Peter, just as Hanna returns to Germany for her son.
Lil Dagover, who plays Charlotte, was the female lead in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Tropes:
- Astrologer: Charlotte's lover, Carl-Otto, is an astrologer. He is introduced giving a lecture to some society ladies where he says that astrology is not magic or mysticism but is totally legit science. He's an obvious con artist.
- Blackmail: Carl-Otto strong-arms Charlotte into giving him some money so he can leave the country. That doesn't stop them from having sex soon after, but later he is even more direct, sending one of his weaselly friends to tell Charlotte that if she doesn't cough up a lot more money, Carl-Otto will write a book about their affair.
- Catapult Nightmare: Hanna has a dream about giving the drink to Charlotte. It ends with her bolting upright in bed catapult nightmare style and screaming "No! I didn't do it!" (What happened was that she unknowingly put ten drops of sedative in a glass of water that Freese the maid had already put ten drops in.)
- Downer Beginning: Mueller kills himself (in fact, already has killed himself as the film opens), leaving his wife Hanna alone and grieving in a foreign country.
- Dramatic Drop: The drunk stumbling through Central Park tries to rouse a man slumped on a bench. When the drunk figures out that Mueller is dead, his cigarette slips from his mouth and falls, before he runs off screaming for help.
- Driven to Suicide: Charlotte, who knows there's no way she can escape Carl-Otto's blackmail, knowingly drinks the glass that Hanna has unknowingly spiked with a fatal dose of morphine.
- High-Class Glass: Carl-Otto sports one. In his case, it's obviously part of his act, an effort to project an air of class when he's actually a sleazy con man.
- Carl-Otto's slimy, Ambiguously Gay friend the Baron, the one who approaches Charlotte with the blackmail demand, also wears such a glass.
- Leg Focus: The very first shot of the movie is a closeup of the legs of a line of American chorus girls, as they kick in line at a New Year's party.
- Love Dodecahedron: There's Charlotte carrying on an affair while also insisting that she loves her husband and would never leave him, while the husband winds up falling in love with the nanny.
- Married to the Job: Charlotte accuses Erich of this, saying that his life is all music and he never pays attention to her.
- Marry the Nanny: Erich falls in love with Hanna, who has gotten hired as nanny to what is actually her own son. After Hanna is cleared of Charlotte's murder, the film ends with her and Erich getting engaged.
- Match Cut:
- From Peter riding on his own little merry-go-round in his room, to dancing figurines spinning on top of a record player.
- Carl-Otto picks Charlotte up into his arms. Cut to a male dancer doing the same with a female at the opera that Erich is conducting.
- Melodrama: In later years Sirk would call this his first melodrama, a film thematically similar to the glossy melodramas he made in Hollywood after World War II. This film certainly is a melodrama, with a noble, tragic widow, her apple-cheeked orphan son, the conductor that falls in love with her, his scheming, cheating wife, drug addiction, a murder trial...
- New Year Has Come: The story starts as the New Year is coming in. A drunk stumbles out of a New Year's Eve party and finds Mueller dead in the park, having shot himself.
- No Swastikas: There were exceptions but for the most part Nazi cinema avoided showing a lot of Third Reich iconography, as Goebbels believed that light escapist fare was better at keeping the population quiescent. In this film set in 1936 Berlin no swastikas are seen anywhere, neither on flags nor on uniforms, not even in a courtroom. The only Nazi symbol in the movie is a Nazi eagle over a gate at the airport, and that is shot from a distance.
- Ode to Joy: Erich is conducting Beethoven's Ninth, and the "Ode to Joy" section is shown in the film in its entirety. This does a couple of things. First, Hanna is shown listening to the concert on the radio with a look of rapture on her face, while Charlotte is at home admitting to the maid that she is "not musical", suggesting that Hanna is a better match for Erich than his own wife. Second, this Nazi movie starts off with a scene in the United States where a band is playing jazz at a raucous concert, so the use of "Ode to Joy" contrasts pure German culture with decadent America.
- Orphanage of Love: That one nurse is kind of bitchy, but overall, the orphanage where little Peter is staying has a kind and well-intentioned staff, led by the honorable Dr. Oberheit.
- P.O.V. Cam: The camera spins right before Charlotte faints.
- Sitting Sexy on a Piano: There's a woman dancing on a piano, in the sleazy nightclub from where Carl-Otto calls Charlotte.
- Translation Convention: It's a little bit weird when a New York cop, speaking in German, asks Hanna if she's from Germany, and Hanna answers yes, in German.
