Address Unknown. 1944. USA. William Cameron Menzies. Screenplay by Herbert Dalmas, based on the novel by Kressmann Taylor. With Paul Lukas, Carl Esmond, Peter van Eyck, K.T. Stevens, Mady Christians. 72 min.
William Cameron Menzies, better known as the revolutionary production designer of Gone with the Wind, brought his remarkable visual imagination to this haunting anti-Nazi drama, one of Hollywood's most stylistically adventurous films of the 1940s. Based on Kressmann Taylor's epistolary novel, the film traces the dissolution of a friendship between two art dealers---one Jewish-American, one German---as Nazi ideology drives them apart in the years leading up to World War II. Menzies transforms this intimate story into a network of shadows and forced perspectives, with expressionistic compositions that grow increasingly distorted as fascism takes hold. The remarkable cinematography by Rudolph Maté emphasizes deep focus and severe angles, while the innovative sound design makes powerful use of silence and echoes.