The Passing of the Third Floor Back
(GB 1935)

Inhalt / Synopsis

Nach einem Theaterstück von Jerome K. Jerome. In einem londoner Boarding House wohnen recht unterschiedliche Menschen zusammen, die sich täglich zu einem Ritual gegenseitiger Verletzungen und Hänseleien treffen. Eines Tages taucht ein Fremder auf, der im Hinterzimmer im dritten Stock Quartier findet. Seine sanfte gutmütige Art lässt die anderen Bewohner nicht unberührt. Vor allem das Dienstmädchen Stasia ist von dem neuen Gast beeindruckt. Nur der reiche Mr. Wright scheint immun gegen die positive Ausstrahlung des Fremden zu sein. An einem Feiertag lädt der Fremde alle zu einer Bootstour auf der Themse ein. Die gemeinsame Unternehmung wirkt wie Balsam auf die verletzten Seelen, und man beginnt, netter miteinander umzugehen. Angestachelt von Mr. Wright, dem die Wandlung der anderen gar nicht gefällt, fallen die meisten jedoch schon am nächsten Tag wieder in ihren alten Trott. Schließlich kommt es zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen dem Fremden und Mr. Wright, gleichsam wie ein Kampf von Gut gegen Böse.

Kritiken

Jerome K. Jerome’s famous story – a modern morality in a sordid boarding-house setting, peopled with figures which are less characters than epitomes of types, and a mysterious »stranger«, who is scarce more tangible in a character than a God-like presence, must have been a terribly difficult subject to screen faithfully. Berthold Viertel, however, has done it. A director more »straightforward«, to use a term which too often cloaks lack of artistry, might have given it a realistic treatment and achieved a cheap sentimental-comedy success, but the artist, or, more exactly, the poet, in Viertel has kept the story on the symbolic plane it demands and given it powerful appeal for the perceptive. […]
Unquestionably the director has impressed his own sensitivity and understanding on the whole picture, and imbued a well-picked company with the same spirit of sincerity and belief in the subject. Conrad Veidt is reasonably effective in the difficult role of the Stranger, though one feels for once that this peculiar voice and accent are not in his favour.

A Difficult Subject Faithfully Screened
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
Jewish Chronicle (London), 18.10.1935


The original story of THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK belongs […] to a literary age which believed in presenting the fight between good and evil in its most elemental form.
You can see what pitfalls of sentiment threatened the writers of the screen version, Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock [Alma Reville] and Michael Hogan, and most of the time you can admire the neatness with which they have side-stepped them. Faced with the task of introducing a heavenly visitor into a Bloomsbury boarding house, ready and anxious to rent the third floor back and set right the internal squabbles of the lodgers, they have behaved, I think, with extreme discretion. There is no sudden revelation, no abrupt access of penitence. What happens to the boarders happens gradually, rather as the logical result of circumstances than from any kind of holy exhibitionism. I was expecting all the time to see horns sprouting from the forehead of Mr. Wright, the jerry-builder, who in another school of writing would obviously have qualified as Satan; but nothing of the kind happened. The only rather ticklish moment was the stranger’s passing, to the unseen accompaniment of a heavenly choir.

C. A. Lejeune: The Passing of the Third Floor Back
The Observer (London), 20.10.1935

To my surprise I enjoyed THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK. The pious note has been toned down, the milk of human kindness in the original play has been agreeably watered, and the types in the small London »private hotel« are observed with malicious realism. Unfortunately, sweetness and light do break in, and the director cannot convey these qualities with the same truth as the cans of cooling water, the interminable uncarpeted stairs, the jangle of bells and nerves. The excursion steamer, on which the Stranger takes everyone for a trip to Margate, is as chromium-plated as a millionaire’s yacht and carries a chorus of Goldwyn girls in bathing-costumes, this is to be a little too cynical. The right sense of sudden and happy release can surely sometimes be caught among the winkles and blare and sweat of an August holiday.

Graham Greene: The Passing of the Third Floor Back
The Spectator (London),1.11.1935