Siodmak 's return to Europe in 1954 with a Grand Prize nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for his remake of Jacques Feyder 's '' Le grand jeu '' was a misstep , despite its stars , Gina Lollobrigida ( two of them ) and Arletty in the role originated by Françoise Rosay , Feyder 's wife . In 1955 , Siodmak returned to the Federal Republic of Germany to make '' Die Ratten '' , with Maria Schell and Curd Jurgens , winning the Golden Berlin Bear at the 1955 Berlin Film Festival . It was the first in a series of films critical of his homeland , during and after Hitler , which included the remarkable '' Nachts , wenn der Teufel kam '' , both thriller and social artifact of Germany under Nazi rule , shot in documentary style reminiscent of '' Menschen am Sonntag '' and '' Whistle at Eaton Falls '' , and in 1960 , '' Mein Schulfreund '' , an absurdist comedy , dark and strange , with Heinz Ruhmann as a postal worker attempting to reunite with childhood friend Hermann Göring . Between these films , and '' Mein Vater , der Schauspieler '' in 1956 , with O. W. Fischer ( the West German Rock Hudson ) , he took a detour into Douglas Sirk territory with the sordid melodrama , '' Dorothea Angermann '' in 1959 , featuring Germany 's star Ruth Leuwerik . Later the same year he left Germany for Great Britain to film '' The Rough and the Smooth '' , with Nadja Tiller and Tony Britton , yet another noir , but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America ( compare its downbeat ending with that of '' The File on Thelma Jordan '' ) . He followed with '' Katia '' also in 1959 , a tale of Czarist Russia , with twenty-one-year-old Romy Schneider , mistakenly titled in America '' The Magnificent Sinner '' , recalling — unfavorably — Siodmak 's other costume melodrama . In 1961 , '' L'affaire Nina B '' , with Pierre Brasseur and Nadja Tiller ( again ) , returned Siodmak to familiar ground in a slick , black-and-white thriller about a pay-for-hire Nazi hunter , which could be argued was the start of the many spy themed films so popular in the 1960s . In 1962 , the entertaining '' Escape from East Berlin '' , with Don Murray and Christine Kaufman , had all the characteristic style of a Siodmak thriller , but was one that he later dismissed as something he had made for " little kids in America . " His work in Germany returned to programmers like those that had begun his career in Hollywood 23 years earlier . From 1964 to 1965 , he made a series of films with former Tarzan Lex Barker : '' Der Schut '' , '' Der Schatz der Azteken '' , and '' Die Pyramide des Sonnengottes '' , all taken from the western , adventure novels of Karl May and made ( presumably ) for little kids in both Germany and America
1955 Berlin Film Festival
5th Berlin International Film Festival
Robert Siodmak