Features: April, Fool! [April, April] ; The Girl from Marsh Croft [Das Mädchen vom Moorhof] ; Pillars of Society [Stützen der Gesellschaft]

Shorts : Two Greyhounds [Zwei Windhunde] ; Three Times Before [3 x Ehe aka Dreimal Ehe] SILENT VER. (Presented with intertitles) ; Three Times Before [3 x Ehe aka Dreimal Ehe] SOUND VER. (Filmed with dialogue, presented with subtitles due to loss of sound reel) ; The Imaginary Invalid [Der eingebildete Kranke]

An undisputed master of melodrama, director Douglas Sirk is best known for the lavish, sweeping romances he made during the last decade of his career, including Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life. But by the time Sirk – born Hans Detlef Sierck – arrived in Hollywood, he had already made several films in his native Germany. The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present this collection of Sirk’s earliest films, all of which established a blueprint for his later work: April Fool! (April! April!), The Girl from Marsh Croft (Das Mädchen vom Moorhof) and Pillars of Society (Stützen der Gesellschaft).

In Sirk’s directorial debut – the comedy April Fool! – a businessman and shameless social climber, Julius Lampe (Erhard Siedel), is subjected to a cruel April Fools’ Day prank when he is led to believe a noble prince (Albrecht Schoenhals) intends to personally inspect his pasta factory. Then, in Sirk’s first melodrama The Girl from Marsh Croft, farmer Karsten Dittmar (Kurt Fischer-Fehling) falls in love with the disreputable young maid Helga Christmann (Hansi Knoteck) – much to the dismay of his fiancée Gertrud Gerhart (Ellen Frank). Finally, in Pillars of Society, wealthy Norwegian shipbuilder Consul Karsten Bernick (Heinrich George) must face up to a lifetime of corruption and deceit when farmer Johann Tonnessen (Albrecht Schoenhals) returns to Norway after a twenty-year absence and discovers that Bernick has smeared his good name.

Presented alongside Sirk’s shorts Two Greyhounds (Zwei Windhunde), Three Times Before (Dreimal Ehe) and The Imaginary Invalid (Der eingebildete Kranke), these three features – all released in 1935 – showcase the burgeoning talents of a filmmaker who would go on to become one of the most important figures in the history of Hollywood cinema. Sirk’s early works are presented here on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from brand-new restorations by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.