Opfergang (aka The Great Sacrifice) (1944)

A recently married man (Carl Raddatz) falls under the spell of the beautiful wild spirited but terminally ill woman  (Kristina Soderbaum) who lives on the estate next to his. Based on the novel by Rudolf G. Binding and directed by Veit Harlan. This soapy melodrama seems an odd film to come out of the Nazi era. I couldn't detect any overt propaganda and it's the kind of melodrama that Douglas Sirk might have been able to whip into shape at Universal in the 1950s with Lana Turner but here, it's too literal and heavy handed to have any impact. None of the characters are appealing: the wife (Irene Von Meyendorff) who looks the other way at her husband's adultery, the vixen breaking up a home and the husband who wants to keep his wife and have his mistress too! It doesn't help that Meyendorff (who was the top pin up girl for WWII Germany as Betty Grable was in the U.S.) is more attractive and elegant than Soderbaum. She should be enough to keep any husband at home. Joseph Goebbels (Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda) took a personal interest in the film and insisted the ending of the book be changed. Of interest to those curious about cinema created during the Third Reich. For others, Hollywood did this sort of thing so much better. With Franz Schafheitlin.