1944’s Address Unknown has an interesting setup. In the years leading up to Hitler taking power in Germany, ex-pats Paul Lukas are Morris Carnovsky together run an art gallery in San Francisco. Despite the tensions in Germany, and Carnovsky being Jewish, it is obvious these two are great friends with a long history together. Now Lukas, wife Mady Christians and their children are returning to Germany, and Lukas will send Carnovsky paintings from there.
He is also taking Cavnovsky’s daughter (K.T. Stevens) with them, so she can pursue her acting career in Berlin. I thought that odd, and wondered if there as a shortage of acting gigs in the U.S. at the time. Alas, her departure puts the kibosh on her pending nuptials with Lukas’s son (Peter van Eyck). Eyck will stay behind in the U.S. and assist Carnovsky with the gallery.
The first painting sent by Lukas is a modern art piece intended to be a joke. As always, beauty is in the eye of the wealthy arts collector, in this case it is Mary Young, despite the protestations of Eyck. Get a load of this exchange between him and her: “Some people paint with their heart and some with their hands.” “What do you think this person painted this with?” “I…wouldn’t care to say.”
That is as light as the film will get, as Lukas will quickly draw unwanted attention from a baron played by Carl Esmond. Lukas is sitting in a bar one day with a professor friend played by Frank Reicher. Esmond is displeased that Carnovsky expresses a dislike of Hitler, and he encourages Lukas to write back, and correct his misunderstands, that the man is restoring hope for a country in ruins since the Treaty of Versailles. Reicher says that “when people are hungry, they do not care what kind of man it is who give him bread.” I didn’t think of it at the time, but it is telling we never see that man again.
In subsequent correspondence, Lukas will gloss over the smashing of shop windows and other assaults on Jewish people, chalking it up to a few bad apples. Then Esmond discovers Stevens, who has been using a stage name, is Jewish, and he orders Lukas to sever ties with that family: “You will have to choose. You can’t sit on two stools at once.”
Eyck reads aloud portions of the next letter Carnovsky receives: “You understand that I must discontinue correspondence with a person of your race. […] We go singing through our valley with muscles tingling, tingling for a new work. And from the mountains ring the voice of Votan and Thor, the old strong gods of the German race. What in the world is he talking about?” I am as confused as he is, as it sounds like his dad started transcribing the libretto from Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
Carnovsky tries to think of a way to write letters to Lukas that will get through the German censor. He even sends a communication to Lukas through friend Frank Faylen, simply for a reply with the word “yes”. Instead, what is returned is simply “no”. This seems like an ice cold spin on the famously brief correspondence between Victor Hugo and his editor regarding the latter’s thoughts on Les Miserable: “?” was replied to with “!”.’
Ice cold is good way to describe Lukas’s treatment of Stevens when she seeks shelter in his house after being pursued by the Gestapo across the countryside. He tells her to go away and slams the door in her face. We hear the machine gun fire as she dies on the other side of the door. He will send a terse communique to her father to tell him she’s dead.
Soon, Lukas starts receiving strange and obviously coded telegrams from Carnovsky. As such messages go through the censors, Esmond tries to warn Lukas, telling him it is treason to send or receive communications in code. Lukas genuinely professes confusion, and he comes to live in fear of the next time the bell rings that postman has arrived. He even starts intercepting the mail before the servants can retrieve it, which is making them suspicious. The man writes to his, begging him to make Carnovsky stop.
This is a simple, but powerful film. It is clearly a low-budget production, with one of the first things we see a laughably still image of the San Francisco Bay that is supposed to be the view out of a window. But it makes up for monetary shortcomings with Expressionist lighting and some sets which are impressive in their starkness.
One such set is quite impressive, and that is the play in which Stevens is starring. It is there government censor Charles Halton arrives before opening night to tell the director such lines as “blessed are the meek” are to be removed from the script. In the performance, Stevens will speak the forbidden lines just the same, saying, “I don’t believe any government wants to censor goodness, gentleness and truth”. When it is revealed she is Jewish, the audience will turn on her, and that is when she runs for her life.
I find it unfortunate that every movie I see from this era as concerns the Nazis has frightening parallels to today. While nobody has lost their lives for it, talk show hosts are increasing coming under fire for mocking the president, a man petty enough that he has schemed to have Stephen Colbert’s show terminated within the year and Jimmy Kimmel was off the air for nearly a week. Those who have made statements regarding the recent death of Charlie Kirk which did not align with the point of view of the present administration have lost their jobs and been hounded on social media. As for the types of lines Halton wanted removed from the play, that feels awfully similar to the kind of twisted Christianity espoused by many lately, a belief system which somehow refuses to aid the sick, the poor and the downtrodden.
Another unnerving parallel is a proposed “National Medal of Motherhood”, which recalls the Nazi’s Honor Cross of the German Mother. I thought of this in a scene at the christening of the latest boy born to Lukas and Christians. It is no surprise he is given the name Adolph. Esmond congratulations Christians on having birthed so many boys, that she has done her duty to the country. Disgusted with her husband, she will soon take the children to Switzerland, and I wondered if the German government sent her medal to her there. And, if she received it, I like to think she told there where to stick, how far and, if they enjoyed it, to feel free to do it again.
Address Unknown will end in one of the most stunning and memorable conclusions I have seen in all of cinema. The very last shots will be just one face and then the other person’s reaction shot. No words are exchanged, as none are necessary. It is a devastating moment. It is a devasting film.
Dir: William Cameron Menzies
Starring Paul Lukas, Carl Esmond, Peter van Eyck, Mady Christians, Morris Carnovksy
Watched as part of Mill Creek’s blu-ray set Noir Archive Volume 1: 1944-1954