Heimkehr" is a German black-and-white silent film from 1928, so this one will have its 90th anniversary next year. The director is Viennese-born filmmaker Joe May and this is one of his most known works. It is one of the films he made before going to Hollywood and making English-language movies. May is also part of the writer duo who adapted the Leonhard Frank novel for the screen here. This film came out 10 years after the end of World War I and it focuses on the concept of coming home from war and finding everything in shatters. This story has been used in many many films since then and this may be one of the earliest. One example would be Jon Voight's "Coming Home" of course. But back to this one here. There is also major focus on the plot development of one soldier's wife falling in love with another solider while the initial man of her choice is still missing, possibly presumed dead. But this is the part that did not work at all in my opinion. early on before Dita Parlo's character came into play, this was a decent watch, a war drama and story of two men that is as decent as it is old. But the romance drama did not really do a lot for me and I thought the longer it went the more did the film drag, maybe because it became more and more difficult to care for the characters with the somewhat despicable acts they committed. Intertitles (or lack thereof) area frequent problem in these old silent films, but not here really. It wasn't too hard to understand the story. Silent film fans will probably recognize some faces, at least Gustav Fröhlich, who plays one of the central characters in this triangle relationship film. And these are also the only ones that I would recommend seeing this film to. Everybody else, especially people who never head a great interest in silent films (and this also somehow applies to me I guess) should skip it as there is no way this is gonna sparkle their interest. I give it a thumbs-down because it did not manage to stay on the convincing level of the first 30 minutes and almost 2 hours was just way too long for the film's own good.
Review of Homecoming
