At night when the devil came

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Movie
Original title At night when the devil came
Country of production Federal Republic of Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1957
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 12, originally 16
Rod
Director Robert Siodmak
script Werner Jörg Lüddecke
production Walter Traut
music Siegfried Franz
camera Georg Krause
cut Walter Boos
occupation

The Devil Strikes at Night (alternatively, at night when the devil came ) is a in black and white twisted German thriller of Robert Siodmak from 1957. The screenplay is based on a series of articles by Will Berthold about the alleged serial killer Bruno Lüdke , who in the film by Mario Adorf is embodied. The other leading roles are cast with Claus Holm and Hannes Messemer as well as Peter Carsten , Karl Lange , Werner Peters and Annemarie Düringer .

action

Germany is in the war year 1944. The party functionary Willi Keun honors a sports group of the Association of German Girls . Keun conducts the event very superficially and then visits his lover Lucy, who serves in a harbor bar. Shortly before, she had served the unskilled worker Bruno Lüdke. This catches the eye because he eats unrestrainedly and tries to impress Lucy by uncorking bottles with just one finger. When Keun approaches Lucy from behind to take her by the breast, she scratches his hands bloody, assuming it is her boss. They arrange to meet in Lucy's apartment that evening. There, in the conversation between Keun and Lucy, it becomes clear how little both of them are still convinced of the slogans of Nazi ideology. Keun gets drunk and half-heartedly excuses himself not to be able to fight at the front because as a child he cut his left thumb off on a circular saw. Lucy admits she's hoarding rationed groceries in an inconspicuous stroller under the hallway stairs. She sets out to fetch canned morello cherries. Lüdke lies in wait in the dark hallway and strangles her. He drags the body into the hallway of her apartment. When the residents of the house flee through the hallway because of an air raid alarm, the air raid warden discovers Lucy's body. The drunk Keun is suspected of having committed the crime, also because his hands show scratches. His public defender, who visits him in the cell with Detective Superintendent Kersten, shows little commitment to defend him appropriately, also because he is obviously convinced that Keun committed the crime. Kersten, on the other hand, told Keun that he thought he was innocent.

Axel Kersten, who is unfit for war because of a shrapnel injury, pays particular attention to the case. Special circumstances indicate that the killer must be extremely powerful. The commissioner quickly determines that there are other crimes with a similar sequence of events. Kersten believes the act was committed by a serial killer who has been up to mischief for eleven years. The theory of a perpetrator who is considered inferior according to the National Socialist race theory appeals to SS group leader Rossdorf, who is looking for a publicly deterring example of the correctness of this racial theory. Such an example should underpin his concern to launch a law on eugenics . Kersten refers to his view more suitable officials who could realize Rossdorf's concerns. Rossdorf ignores Kersten's negative attitude, encourages him to find the murderer and assures him of all support.

After lengthy investigations, the inspector can actually convict the insane Lüdke. He admits to numerous other murders of women that he killed as a pastime. But after a visit to Adolf Hitler , SS-Gruppenführer Rossdorf showed a completely different side to the commissioner: The "Führer" had come to the decision not to use the Lüdke case in the planned way for propaganda purposes. On the contrary, the actions and the existence of the murderer should be kept secret, since in the Third Reich it should not be possible that a moronic mass murderer who is neither a Jew nor a foreigner could have murdered for years undetected and with impunity.

Keun is still convicted as a perpetrator and “shot while trying to escape”, while Lüdke is killed without a trial. Commissioner Kersten, who protests against this procedure and wants to bring the truth to light, is demoted and sent to the front as a soldier. At the train station, Kersten says goodbye to the detective assistant Helga Hornung, who has become more than just a dear friend to him. She asks him to come back healthy and above all soon. Major Thomas Wollenberg, a distant relative of Helga, met her at the train station and informed her that the Gestapo was already waiting for her in her apartment. She should get into his waiting car without a fuss, then one would be in Stockholm in the afternoon.

production

Production notes, filming

The film was directed by the production company KG Divina GmbH & Co. produced. The company belonged to Ilse Kubaschewski , who was also the owner of Gloria-Film GmbH & Co. Filmverleih KG . The shooting lasted from June to July 1957. The outdoor shots were made in Munich and West Berlin, the studio shots in the Divina studio in Baldham . Rolf Zehetbauer and Gottfried Will were responsible for the film construction.

The truth of the script was not questioned further. According to director Siodmak, it was about " making a real anti- Nazi film " out of the material .

background

The script is based on the article series of the same name published in 1956 in the Münchner Illustrierte by Will Berthold about the alleged serial killer Bruno Lüdke .

In the book series "Criminal Cases Without Example" by Günter Prodöhl (1st episode, Verlag Das neue Berlin , 1965, 6th edition), which appeared shortly after the film in the GDR and which was based on the relevant files, the author came to concluded that Lüdke was deliberately set up as a serial killer and that the film does not correspond to the facts. The Dutch chief commissioner J. A. Blaauw also stated in an article from 1994 that the mentally handicapped Bruno Lüdke was blamed for unsolved murders. He confessed to a whole series of murders, probably including those that never took place and that he invented. Bruno Lüdke may have never murdered anyone.

Robert Siodmak explicitly stated in his autobiography that of all the films he made after leaving the USA he only felt proud at night when the devil came and the Gerhart Hauptmann film adaptation The Rats . In his memoir “Between Berlin and Hollywood” Siodmak wrote: “I had seen Mario Adorf in the Kammerspiele. ' The Caine Was Her Destiny ' was performed. Mario Adorf didn't have a word to say. He sat on the right side of the stage as a stenographer and typed the course of the trial on a silent typewriter. He did it with such attention and intensity that I - and probably not just me alone - noticed him and I made up my mind to cast him one day. ”Siodmak then engaged Adorf on the spot for“ the role of naive- brutal mass murderer Bruno Lüdke ”. Meinolf Zurhorst and Heiko R. Blum stated in the biography of the “ Heyne Film Library Mario Adorf - His Films - His Life” that it was “a stroke of luck for Adorf, for Siodmak and for Gloria Filmverleih in Munich”, “because the young actor ”had“ a special feeling for reality ”. “Before filming began”, Adorf had “dealt with a bundle of files and documents” and tried “to capture the historical figure of Bruno Lüdke, to make her something very personal”.

For Adorf, the memory of the film always remained "with a downer, as" one of the decisive scenes of the film fell victim to the distribution gap: the actual key scene, which confronts the crimes of the sick murderer Bruno with the large-scale extermination program of National Socialism ". In an interview, Adorf emphasized that this film was "important" for him. Today (2020) Adorf distances himself from his work and " wants to help that this man is rehabilitated ".

Publication, success

The premiere of the film took place on September 19, 1957 in Essen (Capitol, Alhambra).

The Bruno Lüdkes sisters, who lived in East Berlin , applied for an injunction against the feature film in February 1958. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court decided, however, that Lüdke had established himself through his confessions as a person of contemporary history who did not need any protection.

The film was also released in Sweden and Finland in 1958, in the United States, France and Argentina in 1959, in Denmark in 1960 and in Spain in 2008. He has also been seen in Brazil, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy. The English titles are: The Devil Came at Night and The Devil Strikes at Night .

The film was released several times on DVD, for example on Studiocanal in May 2003, as well as within the "Two thousand and one edition of German film" and at the end of September 2017 on Alive within the series "Jewels of film history".

Night when the devil came received positive reviews and many awards. After being awarded the Federal Film Prize , the film became an audience success in smaller cinemas. The role of Bruno Lüdke helped Mario Adorf achieve a breakthrough, but at the same time set him as a “villain” actor for years.

The film was first broadcast on German television on August 17, 1970 in the evening program of ZDF .

reception

Reviews

The contemporary reviews went wild, the film means the breakthrough for Mario Adorf as an actor, ten federal film awards document the success of the film, one of them for the debutant Adorf. The German audience, however, reacted "initially rather hesitantly": "At the premiere in a huge Essen cinema, the stars were almost among themselves." [...] "Only after the official recognition, after the award of the federal film prizes, does the audience's behavior change . The film will be a success after all. "

"Realistically, sensitively and with a convincing sketch of the historical background, Siodmak developed the authentic criminal case into one of the most oppressive studies on the connection between totalitarianism, violence and crime known to German cinema."

- Reclam's Lexicon of German Films (1995)

"Siodmak's best work after his return to Germany gives a gloomy picture of the time."

- Heyne Film Lexicon (1996)

“Tightly staged German crime film with a political background, convincingly played in the leading roles. Worth seeing despite some oversubscription. "

- Lexicon of international film

“The story of a perverse mass murderer in the Third Reich becomes a harsh and apt accusation against certain rulers of the time. A German film that is outstanding in terms of its message and design. "

- Protestant film observer

The film magazine Cinema praised: "Unconcealed settlement with the Nazi era."

Falk Schwarz emphasized on filmportal.de : “This German film will be a compelling study of everyday life in the Third Reich. But the density of the beginning is lost. A tough love story about Commissioner Kersten (Claus Holm) dilutes the tension, the somewhat effeminate Holm has to shy away from any comparison with the tough types of American film noirs. Impressive Hannes Messemer as SS group leader who wants to keep this murder case under lock and key because it damages the Reich. His wildly flaming manner meets the German authoritarian character. Mario Adorf delivers a courageous character study with the dumb violent criminal Bruno. Siodmak was unable to import his style of hard lighting, ruthlessly realistic scenes and dark atmosphere into German studios. In the entertainment routine of the 1950s, this film was a solitaire - and it stayed that way. "

Enno Patalas wrote on the Film Noir page : “A discussion of the National Socialist past in the form of a thriller was an exception in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s. In principle, during the restoration phase under Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, looking into the Third Reich was not popular. The West German film culture reveled in escapist homeland films full of romance or sought comfort in comedies of petty-bourgeois style. ”It was also said that Siodmark's treatment of“ the case of Bruno Lüdke on record ”was“ a settlement with the canon of values ​​and the self-image of a state that is ideologically contaminated in its foundations ”. As a thriller, 'Night when the devil comes' is "significantly inspired by US film noir". Robert Siodmak is "excellent in acting and the music is still reminiscent of the film noir dramaturgy of the forties". This means that “the work is the antithesis of the German film culture of its time”.

Meinolf Zurhorst and Heiko R. Blum stated in their biography about Mario Adorf: "In Adorf's game, the calculating malevolence of the perpetrator and his innocence as a victim of his own psyche are recognizable again and again - the crime as a disease." intensive preparation "in the end to an oppressively realistic depiction that never seemed demonizing or exaggerated". That “bribers” in Adorf's portrayal of villains is - as far as a clever direction allows it - that he “allows social and personal circumstances to flow into”, whereby “his perpetrator figures become a mirror of their time and their surroundings”.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for the night when the devil came . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2003 (PDF; test number: 15 261 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ Axel Dossmann et al. Susanne Regener: Look angry! (PDF; 1.5 MB) In: TAZ, 8./9. September 2007 (last accessed: April 17, 2019).
  3. ↑ Johannes (Jan) Albertus Blaauw: Kriminalistische Scharlatanerien. Bruno Lüdke - Germany's greatest mass murderer?
    In: Criminology. November 1994, Volume 48, pp. 705-712.
  4. ↑ Axel Doßmann, Davide Tosco: BL Resubmission of a murder matter and teaching material collection. Radio report on SWR2 from January 29, 2012. PDF download .
  5. ↑ a b Enno Patalas: At night when the devil came see page der-film-noir.de (including images of various film posters).
    Retrieved April 13, 2020.
  6. ^ A b c Heyne-Filmbibliothek 32/176 Meinolf Zurhorst , Heiko R. Blum : Mario Adorf. His films - his life ,
    Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co.KG Munich, 1992, pp. 11, 12, 22, 23, 42.
  7. ↑ https://www.zeit.de/2020/36/mario-adorf-bruno-luedke-serienmoerder-film-nationalsozialismus/seite-4
  8. ↑ a b Robert Siodmak, Hans C. Blumenberg (Ed.): Between Berlin and Hollywood. Memories of a great film director.
    Herbig, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-8004-0892-9 , pp. 232-235.
  9. ↑ Axel Dossmann et al. Susanne Regener: Look angry! (PDF; 1.5 MB) In: TAZ, 8./9. September 2007 (last accessed: April 17, 2019).
  10. ↑ At night, when the devil came Fig. DVD case two thousand and one edition “Der deutsche Film 2/1957” (in the picture: Margaret Jahnen, Mario Adorf)
  11. ↑ At night when the devil came Fig. DVD case film jewels (in the picture: Mario Adorf, Claus Holm, Peter Carsten)
  12. ↑ At night when the devil came see page zweiausendeins.de and at night when the devil came on Spiegel.de, August 17, 1970.
  13. ↑ Night when the devil came in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  14. ↑ Evangelischer Filmbeobachter, Review No. 625/1957.
  15. ↑ At night, when the devil came see page cinema.de (including film trailer and 22 film images). Retrieved April 13, 2020.
  16. ↑ Falk Schwarz: At night when the devil came see page filmportal.de, review of June 17, 2016. Retrieved on April 13, 2020.