Justinian was portrayed by Orson Welles in the 1968 German film Kampf um Rom I, directed by Robert Siodmak.

Robert Siodmak ( 8 August 1900 – 10 March 1973 ) was a German born American film director.

Siodmak was born in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine ( née Blum ) and Ignatz Siodmak.

The script was written by his younger brother Curt Siodmak, later the screenwriter of The Wolf Man ( 1941 ).

On Mark Hellinger's production Swell Guy ( 1946 ), for instance, Siodmak was brought in to replace Frank Tuttle only six days after completing work on The Killers.

Robert Siodmak was considered an actor's director, discovering Burt Lancaster and skillfully directing actresses such as Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Dorothy McGuire, Yvonne de Carlo, Barbara Stanwyck and Ella Raines.

Nevertheless, he ended his Universal contract with one last noir, the disappointing Deported ( 1951 ) which he filmed partly abroad ( Siodmak was among the first refugee directors to return to Europe after making American films ).

Those " different types " of films he had made-The Great Sinner ( 1949 ) for MGM, Time Out of Mind ( 1947 ) for Universal ( which Siodmak also produced ), The Whistle at Eaton Falls ( 1951 ) for Columbia Pictures-all proved ill suited to his noir sensibilities ( although The Crimson Pirate, despite the difficult production, was a surprising and pleasant departure ).

The five months he collaborated with Budd Schulberg on a screenplay tentatively titled A Stone in the River Hudson, an early version of On the Waterfront was also a major disappointment for Siodmak.

Siodmak was awarded $ 100, 000, but no screen credit.

Katia, released in 1938, was directed by Maurice Tourneur, and the identically-named Katia was directed by Robert Siodmak and released in 1959.

The poem, contrary to popular belief, was not an ancient legend, but was in fact an invention of screenwriter Siodmak.

Paget's first notable film role was as " Teena Riconti ", girlfriend of the character played by Richard Conte, in Cry of the City, a 1948 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak.

The German and French versions were by Curtis Bernhardt, and the British one was written in part by science fiction writer Curt Siodmak.

Curt Siodmak ( August 10, 1902 – 2 September, 2000 ) was a novelist and screenwriter.

He was the brother of noir director Robert Siodmak.

Siodmak was born Kurt Siodmak in Dresden, Germany, the son of Rosa Philippine ( née Blum ) and Ignatz Siodmak.

The movie was co-directed by Curt Siodmak's older brother Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script by Billy Wilder in collaboration with Fred Zinneman and cameraman Eugen Schüfftan.

Siodmak was the nephew of noted film producer Seymour Nebenzal, who funded Menschen am Sonntag with funds borrowed from his father, Heinrich Nebenzahl.

Before leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1952, following the problematic production The Crimson Pirate for Warner Bros., his third and last film with Burt Lancaster, Siodmak had directed some of the era's best film noirs, more than any other director who worked in that genre, twelve in all.

An extensive interview with Siodmak about his career in both Germany and Hollywood is found in Eric Leif Davin's Pioneers of Wonder.

Siodmak worked at this for two years before he persuaded Nebenzal to finance his first feature, the silent chef d ' oeuvre, People on Sunday ( Menschen am Sonntag ) ( 1929 ).

A critical and financial success, it earned Siodmak his only Oscar nomination for direction in Hollywood ( his German production The Devil Came at Night ( Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam ) would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1956 ).

He did set design for Max Reinhardt's theater, served his apprenticeship with F. W. Murnau, and worked with directors including Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann and cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, inventor of the Schüfftan process.

* Edgar Award: Edgar ; from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture, Anthony Veiller ( writer ), Mark Hellinger ( producer ), and Robert Siodmak ( director ); 1947.

Siodmak had originally written the film for Paul Henreid who turned it down.

Siodmak decided to emigrate after hearing an anti-Semitic tirade by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and departed for England where he made a living as a screenwriter before moving to the USA in 1937.

Cry of the City is a 1948 black-and-white film noir directed by Robert Siodmak based on the novel by Henry Edward Helseth, The Chair for Martin Rome.

Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton writing in A Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-1953 comments that director Siodmak had better noir efforts but the film does have one lasting image, " Siodmak will rediscover neither the brilliance of The Killers nor the ' finish ' of Criss Cross in the over-rushed, too uneven, Cry of the City: for all that, one will remember the figure of a forever famished masseuse, a real ' phallic woman ' who, with a flick of the wrists, has a ' tough guy ' at her mercy.

The screen play for this movie was written by Lester Cole and Curt Siodmak ( as Kurt Siodmak ).

Blake first discovered the dark, image-laden and complex character-driven films that would so influence his music at age 12 when he saw Robert Siodmak ’ s The Spiral Staircase.

Siodmak died in his sleep on September 2, 2000, at his home in Three Rivers, California.

* People on Sunday, 1930-Avant-garde look at daily life in Berlin, screenplay by Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak

* 1902 – Curt Siodmak, German-English novelist and screenwriter ( d. 2000 )

Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought a dramatically shadowed lighting style and a psychologically expressive approach to visual composition, or mise-en-scène, with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs.

Perhaps no director better displayed that spirit than the German-born Robert Siodmak, who had already made a score of films before his 1940 arrival in Hollywood.

Criss Cross ( 1949 ), with Lancaster again the lead, exemplifies how Siodmak brought the virtues of the B-movie to the A noir.

In Criss Cross, Siodmak achieves all these effects with purpose, wrapping them around Yvonne De Carlo, playing the most understandable of femme fatales, Dan Duryea, in one of his many charismatic villain roles, and Lancaster — already an established star — as an ordinary laborer turned armed robber, doomed by a romantic obsession.

Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939, where he made 23 movies, many of them widely popular thrillers and crime melodramas, which critics today regard as classics of film noir.

Following the critical success of Phantom Lady, Siodmak directed Christmas Holiday ( 1944 ) with Deanna Durbin.

Siodmak fared better in Europe, especially with the British film The Rough and the Smooth ( 1959 ), another noir, but much meaner and gloomier than anything he had made in America.

* March 10 – Robert Siodmak, German-American director ( b. 1900 )

Laughton played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect ( 1944 ), directed by Robert Siodmak, who would become a good friend.

He worked in Germany with several other beginners ( Billy Wilder and Robert Siodmak also worked with him on the 1929 feature People on Sunday ) before going to America to study film.

She appeared in The Spiral Staircase ( 1946 ) directed by Robert Siodmak, The Paradine Case ( 1947 ) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and Portrait of Jennie ( 1948 ), among others.

* TCM Remembers 2000: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Nancy Coleman, Rose Hobart, Muriel Evans, Steve Reeves, Gwen Verdon, Francis Lederer, Nan Leslie, director Don Weis, director Roger Vadim, Joan Marsh, Billy Barty, costume designer Bill Thomas, Max Showalter, Vittorio Gassman, Marie Windsor, Craig Stevens, David Tomlinson, Richard Farnsworth, director Claude Autant-Lara, film preserver James Card, Beah Richards, Julie London, Marceline Day, Nancy Marchand, Harold Nicholas, Nils Poppe, director Joseph H. Lewis, composer George Duning, director Lewis Allen, Ann Doran, Jean Peters, editor David Bretherlen, writer Curt Siodmak, screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr., Alec Guinness, Loretta Young, Jason Robards, John Gielgud, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor and Walter Matthau.