So Ends Our Night

So Ends Our Night is a 1941 drama directed by John Cromwell and starring Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Glenn Ford. The screenplay was adapted by Talbot Jennings from the novel Flotsam by German exile Erich Maria Remarque, who rose to international fame for his first novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. Plot In 1937 Austria, Josef Steiner, a middle-aged German veteran who escaped from a concentration camp two years ago, and Ludwig Kern, a 19-year-old German from a prosperous family with Jewish blood, are picked up by the police. Lacking passports, they face deportation. Brenner, a German agent whom Steiner knows, offers him a passport in exchange for the names of the friends who helped him escape the camp, but Steiner demurs. Steiner and Kern share a jail cell with other prisoners, including the Chicken, the Pole and a professional gambler/pickpocket who is proud of his "full rights of citizenship." Steiner studies the gambler's card tricks and also befriends the miserable Kern. Deported together, they part at the border, Kern to search for his parents in Prague, Steiner to live by his wits in Austria. The characters struggle to find normalcy in a Europe that is heading for a cataclysmic war. Steiner pines for the wife whom he had left behind and whom his politics have endangered. In Prague, Ludwig meets lovely Jewish exile Ruth Holland, but she is hesitant to enter into a new relationship. In a flashback, her German fiancé insults and abandons her when her Jewish identity threatens his career. Ludwig follows Ruth to Vienna and visits Steiner, now working as a carnival barker, who helps Ludwig secure a job with the carnival. Ruth is unable to continue her studies because she has no passport and seeks out Ludwig, who is thrilled to see her again. Ludwig is beaten by a suspicious carnival customer and then again by the police. He is incarcerated with the same prisoners as in the previous jail stay, and they teach him how to fight.