Liliom

Liliom works as a carousel barker at a Budapest fairground: a loud, swaggering man women take an interest in. When he pays attention to Julie, a young maid, the jealous owner of the carousel fires him, and Julie loses her own job over the same thing. The two move in together, but unemployment grinds Liliom down and someone from the neighbourhood offers him easy money. Fritz Lang made this film after fleeing Nazi Germany for Paris, and it is his only French picture. Adapted from Ferenc Molnár's play, the story rises into the sky in its second half, and in Lang's hands that place turns into an office running on clerks, files and rubber stamps. Showing the next world as a bureaucracy is what stays with you. Charles Boyer plays Liliom.