The tenderness of wolves

Movie
Original title	The tenderness of wolves
Country of production	Germany
original language	German
Publishing year	1973
length	82 minutes
Age rating	FSK 18
Rod
Director	Ulli Lommel
script	Kurt Raab
production	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
music	Peer ravens
camera	Jürgen Juerges
cut	Thea Eymèsz Rainer Werner Fassbinder
occupation
Kurt Raab: Fritz Haarmann Jeff Roden : Hans Grans Margit Carstensen : Mrs. Lindner Hannelore Tiefenbrunner : Mrs. Bucher Wolfgang Schenck : Inspector Braun Rainer Hauer : Inspector Müller Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Wittowski Barbara Schrein : Wittowski's girlfriend Tana Schanzara : confused mother Heinrich Giskes : Lungis Friedrich-Karl Praetorius : Kurt Fromm Rosel Zech : lady at the door Ingrid Caven : Dora Jürgen Prochnow : first fence Brigitte Mira : Louise Engel El Hedi ben Salem : French soldier Hans Hirschmüller : Bicycle seller Karl Scheydt : Police Commissioner Peter Chatel : Karl Meier Rainer Will : Victim Christoph Eichhorn : Victim Erwin Bootz : pianist Wolfgang Schneider : Hehler

The Tenderness of the Wolves is a German feature film by Ulli Lommel from 1973 . It is the second feature film directed by the Fassbinder actor. The film ran in 1973 in the competition at the Berlinale .

action

The film tells the story of the boy killer Fritz Haarmann . However, the story is moved from the 1920s to the post-war period and from Hanover to the Ruhr area . Haarmann is a homosexual petty criminal. Because he is familiar with the criminal milieu, the police hired him as an informant. A series of murders of young men took place at the same time. The police have no idea that they are working with the killer. Even worse; it still gives him the opportunity to make use of his new position and thus attract more victims. He also pretends to be a detective and lures unsuspecting boys into his apartment. He kills her with a Dracula bite in the neck, drinks her blood and processes her into sausage. He sells this sausage to windy business people who earn their money from people's hunger, but have no idea what sausages they take over from Haarmann. Before he was finally convicted by his employer, Inspector Braun, Haarmann had murdered 40 young people.

background

While Romuald Karmakar was to tell the story years later in his film The Dead Maker , Lommel turned it into a vampire film, the atmosphere not only reminiscent of the Dracula films, but also of Fritz Lang's M - A City Seeks a Murderer . Like the technical team, the ensemble consisted of members of the “Fassbinder clique”.

The film was shot largely in Gelsenkirchen , namely on the old, now demolished main train station as well as on Wildenbruchplatz and on Ottilienstraße in Gelsenkirchen-Neustadt.

Reviews

• Lexicon of international films : "The authentic case of the Hanoverian mass murderer Haarmann, who murdered dozens of boys between 1918 and 1924, serves as a source of inspiration for a garish vampire film by Fassbinder actor Ulli Lommel."
• Hans Scheugl considered the “melancholy and almost poetic mood of the film” to be “out of place”. Since the social background and the psychological insight into the person have been almost completely left out, "Haarmann is reduced to a kind of petty-bourgeois Dracula with dissolute pederastic inclinations".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The tenderness of wolves. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 18, 2017 .  
2. ↑ Hans Scheugl: Sexuality and Neurosis in Film. The cinema myths from Griffith to Warhol . Approved, unabridged paperback edition. Heyne, Munich 1978 (Heyne-Buch 7074), ISBN 3-453-00899-5 , p. 210

Web links

• Tenderness of the Wolves in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The tenderness of wolves at Filmportal.de