Die Mörder sind under uns

Today, as the final entry for German Week, DV serves you Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns. It was either that, or one of a handful of other classics I could think of. Lotte Reiniger’s animation classic Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed is one I’ll save for a later day, Gert Fröbe (you know, Goldfinger) was also a good choice – preferrably Es geschah am hellichten Tag, a German classic which was later remade as The Pledge (starring Jack Nicholson). As is so often the case, the remake couldn’t stand up to the original.

All good choices, but Die Mörder sind unter uns (literally “The Murderers are among us”) has a little extra, not in the least its readily availability on DVD (it’s out on Region 2 as well as Region 1). It also tackles post-war Germany, something we haven’t mentioned in this week’s reviews – apart from a brief mention with Goodbye, Lenin (in which a mother from Eastern Germany wakes up after several years of coma and can’t be exposed to severe shocks, which may be somewhat difficult given that the Berlin Wall has been demolished).Die Mörder sind unter uns is also tied with history, the film was made in 1946 and is officially the first post-war movie. In the background of the action, you can actually see the city of Berlin in ruins. Die Mörder sind under uns lives on a rare edge between reality and fiction.

The film begins in 1945, just after the war. The first image we see is that of a destroyed street. People wander around, aimlessly. Among them a drunk man (Ernst Wilhelm Borchert), despised by his neighbours. A little later a young woman enters the shop downstairs, it is Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef), just returned from a concentration camp. She’s ready to return to her old apartment, but not only is it in awful shape after the bombings, it’s also inhabited by the drunk man. He is quite hostile towards her and accuses her of being one of the many who fled the cities during wartime. She doesn’t tell the truth, which only tightens the scene. It also reveals the leitmotiv of the film: guilt. Guilt because of what happened and anger towards those who did awful things during the war and acted as if it never happened. As one Posterman says during the film: “The war is over, things are different now.” Die Mörder sind unter uns is an accusation against those people, as the German dvd obviously declares: as you enter the dvd menu, you’ll hear a voice scream out: “But I’m innocent!”

The drunk man appears to be surgeon Mertens, so disgusted by what has happened during the war he lost the ability to do his job. The screaming patients remind him of the screams of war victims, especially the occasion where several Polish men, women and children were executed on Christmas Day because of an uproar by some men. Mertens pleaded with his superior not to execute the women and children, but to no avail. If it hadn’t been for the festive day, he might’ve even been punished for this weak behaviour. Not much later, the German soldiers are celebrating Christmas under a decorated tree, while dozens of bodies lie outside.

Susanne Wallner succeeds step by step in getting Mertens’s life back on the rails, but the surgeon doesn’t tell what has happened. But when Mertens bumps into his former superior, he’s disgusted by how that man is enjoying his wealth, hardly aware of the many people who have to live in a ruined city. Mertens swears he’ll have revenge on the ‘murderer’, the question is whether Susanne will be in time to stop him…

Die Mörder sind unter uns is the easiest film to watch and I’m not talking about the slow pace the film sometimes has. But the guilt and the ruins weigh heavily on the fllm and doesn’t make it the most enjoyable movie out there. Still, you’ll be glad to have watched it after 81 minutes. Stylistically, it benefits from Germany’s many pre-war classics: there’s still an expressionist feel to some of the film (especially in the scene where Mertens confronts his former superior – as you can see on the poster at the top of this article), but it’s mixed with the neo-realism that became popular just after the war.

The extras on the German disc offer a couple of newsreel clips, the first about the meeting where the American and Russian allies allow film company DEFA to produce their first post-war films. Sadly the German disc doesn’t have any subtitles, so if you don’t understand German and would like to see Wolfgang Staudte’s film, I’ll have to refer you to the Region 1 disc. If you’d like to see a side of the war’s aftermath you rarely get a chance to see, this film should be high on your list.

I’ll give this one 8 out of 10, which is better than I’d originally rated the film. I would’ve left you with a trailer, but couldn’t find it. Instead, the first sequence of the film is available on YouTube, so here’s that instead…

And that is it for German week… “The End” or, as they say in Germany, “Ende”. Yes, all things have to come to an end once. Apart from sausages, they end twice. Or as Stephan Remmler (the former singer of Trio) used to sing in 1987: “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.”

German week: censorship

Germany is one of those countries that like to censor their films. It seems almost odd then that there are German dvd companies that release video nasties on dvd, with a label warning the film is not for sale in Germany. The German-speaking territories have produced quite a number of directors wanting to bring more gore to the screen. Nekoneko has more over at the Litterbox where the nasty Nekromantik is dissected.

Which means it’s another day off for me and time for a video… quite fittingly enough it’s anti-establishment band Atari Teenage Riot (led by Alec Empire) whose “digital hardcore” assaulted your ears in the late nineties and early naughties. One of the band’s EPs was once forbidden in Germany because of the track “Hetzjagd Auf Nazis!” and the subsequent Nazi symbols (which are forbidden in Germany). Quite odd given that the band was very much against the Nazis. Maybe it had something to do with their left-wing political tendencies. And so, conform with our forbidden theme, here’s the video for “Revolution Action”, which was marked too violent for television. Not for DV though…

German week: Deadlock

Forget about the “spaghetti western” (Ennio Morricone never liked the term anyway), no European country loves western more than Germany. Pretty odd for a country that never really made westerns… what Germany did do was reinventing stories of existing westerns. Because of the success of Django, the Germans were quick to rename every Italian western “Django”, whether a character called Django was present or not.
The most interesting film here is Preparati la bara, a western starring Terence Hill. This film is released in Germany under two titles: one is an intact version which is called Django und die Bande der Gehenkten, the other version is cut to pieces and seems to have been made later. By this time, Hill had become famous for the movies in which he co-starred with Bud Spencer,which is why Hill’s character occasionally wonders where “the fat one” would be hanging out. Spencer, you may have guessed, had nothing to do with this film. Preparati la bara was re-edited, not only cutting the violence out but also adding extra comedy bits. And so the Germans managed to make two new films out of existing footage…watch Django und die Bande der Gehenkten by all means, but if you ever spot Joe, der Galgenvogel stay away from this re-edited monstrosity.

So did the Germans make any westerns themselves? Hardly any. The best example is the film adaptations of the Karl May novels, starring cowboy hero Old Shatterhand and his Indian pal Winnetou. Aimed at a young audience, the films were adventure films rather than westerns, just like you’d probably never answer Bonanza if someone would ask you “Name a typical western”. The film adaptations were made by a name that has popped up before: Harald Reinl.

A more typical (albeit modern) western has been made in Germany, even though a lot of people haven’t heard of it. Time for DV to change that then… Deadlock was made in 1970 by Roland Klick. A quick IMDb search will show you Klink isn’t very well known and a lot of his films feature violence. Deadlock has plenty of that too.

It is a weird little film, it starts with a gangster staggering through the desert’s heat, before falling over… exhaustion, we can only guess. A shabby guy drives past, notices the guy and his suitcase. He opens the suitcase, notices it’s brimful of money and does the only decent thing: he takes a rock to crush the guy’s skull. But just as he’s about to hit the gangster, the gangster’s body starts sliding down the mountain. Afraid to spill any extra effort and pleased by the fact the gangster didn’t even react to his body’s sliding down a hill, the shabby guy grabs the suitcase and drives off. Remorse eventually hits him, but not in the form Samaritans would like to hear: he drives back to the gangster, this time with a better weapon, only to find the body is gone. The very next moment he notices there’s a gun pointed towards himself… looks like the gangster wasn’t so dead after all.

What follows is very much a typical western. Sure the horses have been traded in for trucks, but the essential flow of a western is still there. Some settings even reminded me of Django, that most essential western. The characters even have typical western names…our shabby protagonist is Charles Dump, nicknamed “The Rat’. There’s the “Old Killer”, the “Young Killer” (named Kid), the “Girl” and her mother (whose name I won’t mention here, something to do with being raised to have manners etc.).

Mascha Rabben, as “The Girl”, may have gotten a less excitng part (essentially it’s sois belle et tais-toi), but she gives a lasting performance. She’s probably not very known. The only names you may have heard of before are Mario Adorf (as Charles Dump) and Anthony Dawson (as the Old Killer).

Will the Old Killer manage to track down his Kid companion? Will there be bloodshed? Will the Girl’s looks save her? How many people will leave Deadlock alive? All these are questions I won’t answer. I’ve already told you of that rarest of things, a real German western. A Sauerkraut western, if you please.

Deadlock is out on DVD in Germany. The music is once again by Can and adds a lot of extra mystery. It may even be the best reason to watch the film for. Maybe that’s why the film was also dubbed “psychedelic western” and why Jodorowsky likes it so much. The film was recorded in English, so there’s no need to take that German-English dictionary out of your bookshelves if you feel like watching it. The DVD contains an interview with and a documentary about director Klick (as well as an audio commentary by the man), but what is even more special is “Die Chance”, a documentary about Klick’s national search for a girl to play the role of Jessy (The Girl). It’s not often you get to see such an extra for a movie made in 1970.

I leave you with the trailer, but watch out as it contains some spoilers. Ardent westerns fans shouldn’t be too surprised though. Still, if you just want to get a feel of the film, watch only the first two minutes of the trailer.

P.S. And let’s end with some schlager music, it wouldn’t be German week without it. Here’s Gitte telling us about her love for the only kind of man she’s attracted to: “Ich will ‘nen Cowboy als Mann”.

German week: arthouse cinema

Today at DV Nekoneko takes care of the next entry in DV’s German week and it’ll be about the arthouse film. Here the German market shouldn’t be underrated. In the middle of the nineties the European film was on the verge of becoming extinct. European film companies that weren’t already bankrupt were bought by American companies… Euro cinema, once so vibrant in the 70s and 80s, was about to be declared dead. European films were either bland or bad copies of American cinema. People felt the many different languages of Europe were to be blamed. Weirdly enough, this didn’t seem to apply to American films. Apart from the UK, how many countries have English as their mother tongue?

In my opinion, a couple of things happened in the nineties that are worth mentioning. The biggest claim to fame should go to Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von Trier, whose Dogma 95 was exactly what was needed at the time. Sure, it might’ve looked like a strict series of rules, but the main underlying message was: if we don’t have the giant budgets American films have, let’s be creative.

In Germany, there were enough directors who didn’t want to call it a day either. In the last fifteen years, German films often had the little extra lots of other European films didn’t have. Just think of Lola Rennt (Neko’s choice), Der Untergang (reviewed by Deeopey here), The Edukators (reviewed on DV as well) and Das Leben der Anderen (rightfully awarded several prizes). Also worth a mention was Goodbye Lenin, which managed to give a light tone to Germany’s history (Eastern Germany coping with the downfall of the Berlin wall).

Anyway, as this means I’ll have the day off, let’s listen to some music… yesterday we mentioned Klaus Kinski, so our video has to be this hit by The Passions. If only so we can mention the film star was not Kinski. As quoted from the Passions’ site: “Contrary to popular belief, the German Film Star referred to in the song is not Klaus Kinski, Curd Jürgens, Jürgen Prochnow or even Marlene Dietrich. In fact he was neither German nor a star but a certain Steve Connelly, aka Roadent, one time roadie for the Clash and the Sex Pistols. However, he did appear in several minor German films.”

Steve ‘Roadent’ Connelly’s part that must’ve sparked the song must have been in the series ‘Der Joker’, the other two entries in his filmography were directed by one Wolfgang Buld, a name you may be familiar with if you read this site. Yes, he’s the director of Gib Gas, Ich Will Spass reviewed a couple of weeks ago. It is a small world after all.

German week: Im Banne des Unheimlichen

Hier spricht Edgar Wallace… We’ll excuse you if you thought Edgar Wallace was German. In fact, he’s a Brit, but his books were extremely popular in Germany, more than anywhere else in the world. We’re not talking about his most famous creation, for that is King Kong, but about the dozens of crime novels. In the sixties these was turned into movies by the masses. (If you force us to be exact, it’s actually from 1959 to 1971.) As it’s German Week here at DV, we’ll take a closer look at the phenomenon Edgar Wallace tonight.

It wouldn’t actually be not too difficult to review all these movies together, as most of them are somewhat similar. Most begin with a voice saying “Hier spricht Edgar Wallace”, most of them are decent but not exactly masterpieces (I think I must’ve given plenty of Wallace adaptations either 6 or 7 out of 10) a lot of them were directed by the same people (of these Harald Reinl and Alfred Vohrer should be mentioned, for they were the best) and – it’s almost as if someone kept them in a box – most of these films contained the same actors: it’ll be hard to find one without Joachim Fuchsberger (most often as the Scotland Yard detective), Eddi Arent (as the clumsy assistant) and Klaus Kinski (almost always as a psychotic gangster). But, so as not to overcomplicate stuff, we’ll review one of his films in depth: In Banne des Unheimlichen, which also got the pretty exciting English name, The Zombie Walks.

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was born in 1875. He died in 1932, one year before King Kong was released. So it’s not just the German crime movies he never got to see. Don’t worry though, by the time of his death, already 35 film adaptations of his works had been made.
So, with a reassured heart, we can travel back to Germany. The later in the 1960s you get the more odd his movies were. A lot of the earlier work was already tame: there were crime movies (the Germans call them “Krimi”) alright, but you wouldn’t think twice before showing them to a kid (who’d then probably complain Pokemon is far more exciting).In Banne des Unheimichen was made in 1968, by this time the films weren’t too shy to include a bit of violence, nudity and even colour. And what would happen if you’d use those combinations even more? Don’t know? Which quite classic film would be dubbed Das Geheimnis des Grünen Stecknadel in German, do you think? Yes, it’s the classic giallo, What Have You Done to Solange? (with Fuchsberger once again as inspector). Another film based on a book by Edgar Wallace. (It’s not the only Wallace giallo by the way: Riccardo Freda made A doppia faccia with Klaus Kinski, Duccio Tessari directed The Bloodstained Butterfly and Umberto Lenzi directed Seven Bloodstained Orchids. That’s a lot of blood stains…)

Choosing one Wallace movie for this review wasn’t easy: despite the recurring casts, it’s not easy to find a movie with Kinski, Arent and Fuchsberger, which was directed by Vohrer or Reinl. I finally chose Im Banne des Unheimlichen because it was a later Wallace film. The ghostly culprit provides a little extra and it paved the way for the final chapter in the Wallace filmography, the gialli.

In The Zombie Walks, a serial killer, who calls himself “The Laughing Corpse”, dresses up in a skeleton costume, only to kill his victims with a poison-filled scorpion-shaped ring. The killer does look a bit like criminal masterminds so very popular around that era, like Kilink and Kriminal (which was directed by Lenzi, director of Seven Blood-stained Roses, allowing us to go full circle once more). I’m not very sure whether Vohrer tried to give the killer a supernatural touch, but I guess he didn’t (or he failed). Which isn’t too bad: it’s a Krimi and it doesn’t have to be supernatural. (By this time, that other Wallace director, Reinl, was also walking on similar territory, with Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel, another cult classic better known as Castle of the Walking Dead).

Im Banne des Unheimlichen loves using colours, which makes the film seem vibrant. It doesn’t succeed in the scenes where one man is suffering from a rare disease, which makes his face look green. It’s the sort of green failure we’ve only seen in Zombie Lake. (Click here if you want to judge for yourself.) On the plus side, there’s enough mystery to keep the film moving on and Siw Mattson is great as the mysterious and feisty Peggy Ward. Mattson is a Swedish girl, who only appeared in three movies, the other two being Swedish coming of age films (with titles as Eva, the half virgin). I don’t know why she didn’t act more: maybe the other directors didn’t give her the good direction Vohrer gave her, or maybe she was fed up with cinema after her two Swedish films.

The killer’s suit may look a bit silly on the screens, but Vohrer managed to make it seem more menacing during the film. Typical for Wallace is the addition of several subplots to confuse the reader or viewer, but this film manages to do without that. This is also not a film that desperately wanted to show the action took place in Great Britain, like some of the older Wallace movies, which often included a lot of establishment shots from London. And there is also a lack of levity, which is a good thing in my opinion. A lot of the earlier Wallace films contained a slapstick sort of humour (often acted out by Eddi Arent), which I found highly annoying and distracting. The later films, paving a way for the gialli, managed to exclude the comedy bits and were therefore a lot more effective.

If you paid close attention to the introduction of this article, you’ll have figured out how I’d rated this film. If not, I’ve given it 7/10. Most of the Wallace films are out on dvd in Germany, with subtitles, there is even a full dvd box containing no less than 33 films. Pay close attention though: some Krimi movies by Vohrer have a similar dvd sleeve, but if you read carefully, you’ll see it actually says “made by the Edgar Wallace director Alfred Vohrer” on the sleeve. And another thing to watch out for, Wallace had a son, Bryan Edgar Wallace, who also wrote crime novels, some of which were also turned into films. We recommend The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, by Harald Reinl of course.

German week: Das Millionenspiel

Let’s start our German week with a cult classic. Agreed, the idea behind Das Millionenspiel isn’t the most original in the world, but to be fair to Tom Toelle‘s film, most of the movies you’ll think of when I reveal the plot were made later than this one, way back in 1970.

In Das Millionenspiel we meet Bernhard Lotz (Jörg Pleva), this month’s contestant in the widely watched television gave Das Millionenspiel (The Million Game). If Lotz makes it to the end of this live broadcast, he’ll be the proud owner of a million Deutsche Mark (roughly half a million Euro). If he doesn’t get the money, it’s because he has been killed. To make it a bit more exciting for the viewers, there’s a gang of hitmen behind Lotz. If this trio, the “Köhlerbande”, manages to kill the contestant, they get the money. Sounds like a pretty exciting game show? That’s why Lotz is contestant number seventeen.

What makes Das Millionenspiel interesting is that it is filmed as a tv broadcast. Thus does the quizmaster occasionally interrupt the game for a necessary message from the sponsors (commercials which are evidently a satire on society and pretty far-out: there’s one promoting sharp knives which ends in an housewife being stabbed for talking too much and one diet pills commercial that features a stark naked guy, with his hand prudishly placed over the right area).
Also, in what has now become a regular feature on the news bulletins, the show also walks up to the viewers and asks them their opinion on the game show. Additionally, viewers get the chance to help Lotz or to rat him out to his hunters.

This happens because the show is filmed partially in the studio and partially on the contestant’s tail. The contestant is constantly tracked by cameras and, if the cameramen lose the contestant’s steps, the audience can help out the show, trying to find the contestant once again. It’ll all help the ratings.

This is also a good thing for the film: it was made for television and may not have had the biggest budget, but for some reason this helps to make the film more real. Sometimes it’s not too bad to be shabby.

The film is based on the short story “The Prize of Peril” by Robert Sheckley. The movie Le Prix du Danger (by Yves Boisset) was also based on this story and it’s the French film that – according to some sources – was watched by Stephen King, whose The Running Man (also made into a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) eerily resembles the Sheckley story. It can’t have been Das Millionenspiel because the film was shelved in 1977, due to legal reasons. Administrative errors had made it unclear whether the producers did have the rights to the story. The case was finally resolved in 2002 and led to the film’s third transmission in 32 years. In 2009 the film was finally released on DVD.

To me, one of the oddest parts of the film was the masked show ballet that was hired to lighten the mood of the live finale of the game show. The film itself may have predicted the reality shows of the previous decade, but the dancers reveal the film’s age, the most hallucinating era mankind has ever seen. On the other hand, it makes the film only more cult, not? And to make it even more cult: the soundtrack was made by the people behind Can.

As the gameshow host would say: make sure you watch it. For now, here’s a clip:

DV presents: German week!

Jawohl, it’s German week here at DV. The entire week Nekoneko and I will be going through all things Deutsch. Of course, any German readers don’t have to worry… we’ll try and tackle German week with a bit more grace than others. Coming up later this week: westerns, arthouse, gore and krimi.

But now, by way of an introduction, we go back a couple of weeks when I reviewed the German film Gib gas, ich will Spass. The music phenomenon that was Neue Deutsche Welle was mentioned here, but – as there was no way of fitting it into the review – one of the best known German songs was omitted. Here now, the video (albeit in a somewhat altered format – nothing like widescreen, eh) of Trio‘s “Da Da Da”.

P.S. For those who can stomach more, here’s Trio performing Anna, lass mich rein live on German television. It’s not often you see someone eating during a performance.