Sonnenstrahl is the European answer (or dialogue companion, given that the films were contemporary, so there can’t be any imitation) for Frank Borzage’s Depression-era films: romantic and unyielding. It starts with a trivial news item from the USA and England, as if boasting about ‘human interest’ (where there is none in reality) and then descends to the streets of Vienna and the unemployed. A poignant sequence – one of the many at that time about young people considering suicide – introduces the hero, Gustav Fröhlich (remembered as the lead of Metropolis), and then another poor soul, Annabella (the French actress who played the lead in Tavaszi zápor / Marie, a Hungarian Legend). The feeling that ‘life is beauti­ful’ is established by the confidence (and attachment to each other) of two people; sunshine becomes the literal ray of hope, despite the merciless dominance of the social machine, with empty illusions and circumstances that never seem to provide a way out but only lead to another trap. Pál Fejös (1897-1963) was a truly in­ternational character: he made some 40 films – in his native Hungary, in France, Austria, the United States, Denmark, Swe­den, Siam, Peru and Madagascar, from Hollywood super-productions (1927 to 1930) to anthropological documentaries. In his middle period and in the early 30s Fejös directed a set of films in Middle Eu­ropean countries: Tavaszi zápor and Ítél a Balaton (Judgment of Lake Balaton) in Hungary, Sonnenstrahl – known as Gardez le sourire – in Austria. These ballads are the tender center of Fejös’ oeuvre, and have established him among film histori­ans – still only perhaps ‘a happy few’ – as one of cinema’s great poets, along with Murnau and Borzage.