>What makes this subject fascinating is you get to see the process
>through a different society, and it manages to illuminate our own by
>indirection. Also it reminds the reader that at any given moment, what
>is going to happen is still pretty much a mystery for the immediate
>participants. So that each step in the direction of a nightmare it
>almost always possible to rationalize the impending doom away---until
>it is suddenly too late.
>
>CG
Douglas Sirk, most famous for making a series of melodramas in '50s Hollywood, was born in Hamburg to Danish parents. He was raised in Denmark until his teens and then moved to Germany. He was active in Weimar theater, directing an early version of Threepenny Opera, and then became a movie director.
Sirk's first wife joined the Nazi party and this ended their marriage. After the split his ex refused to allow him to see the son they had together. The son became a child star in Nazi propaganda films that Sirk went to watch because it was the only way he could see his son.
Sirk always said he learned from this that you can never be sure you know someone, no matter how close you are.