Imaginatively and skilfully directed despite the considerable limitations of the technical side. With only one microphone in use and no subsequent mixing the music - mostly piano played on or off screen by one of the inmates - was recorded at the same time as the dialogue; although the sound editing sometimes wasn't at the same point as the picture, this sometimes resulted in abrupt cuts - really the only technical problem. When shown at the National Film Theatre on April 1 2015 the print quality was excellent and the sound, though the levels were a bit variable, well balanced with good use of perspectives, and mostly very clear.

The acting is good, held suitably in check, and the intercutting between various conversations quite advanced for the time. Unusually for the period, the film opens with an attractive theme song sung over the titles; the tune recurs from time to time as played by one of the inmates.

The films ends with a neat ironic twist to provide the unhappy ending. Bizarrely, the production company (UFA) shot a further scene (without reference to Siodmak) to go on the end, in which some of the minor characters meet a year later and describe a happy ending for the main characters, thus completely undermining the original ironic ending. (The NFT showed this after the film, with an explanatory subtitle.)

In the middle of a marathon viewing of Akira Kurosawa's works,I decided it was time to go for a second marathon viewing of a fellow auteur film maker whose work I've been wanting to explore in-depth: Robert Siodmak. Checking my pile of his titles,I set to hear Siodmak's first "Talkie."

View on the film:

Hired by Ufa to make the first sound film for the studio after his Silent directing debut People on Sunday (1930-also reviewed) had been a hit and given a budget of 60,000 Marks, directing auteur Robert Siodmak reunites with occasional collaborator (and future Eyes Without A Face (1960-also reviewed) cinematographer) Eugen Schufftan, and between close-up shots of hovers (!) and elegant dissolves over the guesthouse of misfits where Peter and Hella reside.

Siodmak finds in the ending a pessimism which would become a major theme across his works, as Hella (played by a radiant Brigitte Horney in her film debut) waits with bated breath for her lover to return, but finds herself with the fading memory of their romance being the only company she has left.

In what was only his second film credit, Emeric Pressburger joins Irma von Cube in housing Hella & Winkler with a nifty screenplay,where the initial, snappy comedy exchanges between the couple and fellow residences at the guesthouse cracks into a stormy Melodrama of mistrust entering the engaged entanglement of Winkler and Hella.

One of the very first sound movies. Sound is everywhere during the whole film: the vacuum-cleaner, the ringing of the phone, the piano... Everybody speaks but no-one hears, except maybe the cleaning woman who is presented as deaf. The story takes place in a flat where several destinies cross but may be never meet. It is a very bitter description of a microcosm: all the characters are funny, but desperately helpless and hopeless.