Hintertreppe

#3 in my ranking of Paul Leni’s filmography.

The years from 1918-1920 are largely lost in Paul Leni’s filmography, so it becomes difficult to see at this point if the more assured storytelling comes from Leni’s increased experience or the added influence of the co-director Leopold Jessner. I’m actually leaning towards Jessner being the bigger influence because his sudden introduction feels different from what Leni had been making before. Leni’s films had felt overstuffed to a certain extent, but Hintertreppe feels pared down, like a short story of five to ten pages spread over fifty minutes of screentime, like the work of someone who understood that, especially in silent cinema, less can be more. Also, the copy I had listed Leni as just doing the sets even though just about everywhere else lists Jessner and Leni as co-directors.

The maid (Henny Porten) works in a nice apartment owned by rich patrons and spends her days cleaning their kitchen and manning the back door to the back stairs (the literal translation of the title). After she’s done with her work, she sneaks out to meet her lover (William Dieterle) in the street to embrace. One night, the lover does not come to meet her. The next night he does not come either, nor the following. This gets observed by the crippled mailman (Fritz Kortner) who loves the maid and hates to see her in pain, so he decides to forge a letter from the lover to give to her to make her feel better. She’s so excited that she runs after him to thank him, meeting him in his dingy little underground apartment and discovering his secret of his forgery.

That is something like two-thirds of the film, and it really takes its time to tell it. I really don’t mind here because it’s about focusing on these two characters as they navigate each other cautiously in the middle of this dangerous looking place. The nature of the world is defined by the set design, and it’s effectively another character (all praise goes to Leni for this). The kitchen looks well-put together, but the titular stairs are dark and decaying (so distinctive that they ended up firmly influencing a lot of German Expressionism afterwards) while the outside world (a very tall set of a pair of buildings up against each other) is dark and imposing. The postman’s flat is simple and dirty. It all amounts to this imposing, grimy environment in which these two characters end up almost entirely alone.

Aside from the lover’s early appearance for a minute or so, the maid and the postman are the only two characters for about forty minutes of the film’s fifty minutes of screentime. We see shadows of the maid’s employers behind a glass window having a party, but her existence is otherwise a lonely one. The lack of other actors could very well have been a cost saving move at the time, but it has a great effect of making the discovery between the two all the more affecting. They’re alone, and all they can find is each other, so when the maid discovers the postman’s ruse, she can’t help feeling, after a minute of a sense of betrayal and invasion, that he was just trying to be kind to her (I was honestly expecting something far more nefarious, which I never got, and I don’t mind).

The tragedy happens when the lover comes back and everything comes crashing down. It fully embraces its status as melodrama with its final movements, and it’s not something I entirely oppose. I don’t hate melodrama, but I think these final moves end up feeling like a more sensational out than something that could have been a bit more character-driven. The issue is that while the relationship between the maid and the postman is very nice, we don’t get deeper senses of their character beyond their stations and the postman’s deformity. Her feeling compelled to do something so drastic after we know so little about her individually feels almost like a cheat. It is essentially a scandalous ending that sort of works, but it could have been better with a fuller portrait of the maid.

However, that’s not to take away from the central little tragic romance. It’s quite nice, and it’s framed greatly in this fantastic series of sets. I think it works quite well overall. It’s small, looks great, and has an ending that goes a bit too far, but it’s fine.

Rating: 3/4