The end of a night
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The end of a night |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2012 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Matti Geschonneck |
| script | Magnus Vattrodt |
| production | Wolfgang Cimera |
| music | Florian Tessloff |
| camera | Judith Kaufmann |
| cut | Ursula Höf |
| occupation | |
| |
The End of a Night is a German television film by Matti Geschonneck from 2012. Both the film and the leading actresses Barbara Auer and Ina Weisse were awarded the German Television Prize , among others . On March 26, 2012, the judicial drama was shown on television for the first time by ZDF .
action
The Düsseldorf police received a call one evening from a woman who had locked herself in her bedroom. Her husband beat and raped her. When Detective Chief Inspector Ralf Benning arrives with his men on site and finds numerous traces of blood and the disturbed woman in the couple's villa, he has the husband, the wealthy software entrepreneur Werner Lamberg, arrested immediately. Four months later, the trial, which the media is eagerly awaiting, begins at the Düsseldorf Regional Court . Convinced of Lamberg's guilt, the responsible judge Katarina Weiss hopes for a quick conviction in order to finally spend a long-planned weekend in Milan with her husband André . However, she did not expect criminal defense attorney Eva Hartmann, who took over the case for the Berlin law firm Sänger at short notice and is determined to obtain an acquittal for her client.
While Lamberg protests his innocence in court - he was jogging at the time of the crime - his wife Sandra accuses him of having previously beaten her regularly. On the evening of the alleged rape, they had dinner with Robert and Hanni Koch, a couple who were friends. Then Lamberg beat Sandra through the villa and violated her because she supposedly wanted to part with him. A psychological expert is convinced that Sandra is telling the truth. Defender Hartmann, however, knows how to refute Sandra's statement and that of the expert. According to Hartmann, trace analysis could not prove that Lamberg was guilty either. Rather, Hartmann presents the possibility that Sandra has come up with a complex lie and may suffer from a mental disorder. It was Lamberg who wanted to divorce his unstable wife. According to the marriage contract, Sandra would not have received any of his assets in this case. That's why she invented rape, injured herself and memorized the alleged sequence of events. While Lamberg's friend and business partner Robert Koch backs Lamberg with his statement, his wife Hanni stands by Sandra. Hanni had received a call from Sandra that evening, but hadn't rushed to her friend's help and hadn't alerted the police either, because she didn't seem to take Sandra's call for help seriously. Hartmann finally applies for a second expert opinion and causes Lamberg to be released from custody for the time being. In addition, she has a search for an unknown jogger who is said to have met Lamberg on the sports field at the time of the crime.
In the course of the trial, Judge Weiss, who is known for giving harsher sentences to rich men, repeatedly clashes with the defense attorney. She thinks Hartmann is an unscrupulous lawyer who cares more about her own career than the truth. Weiss is only too happy to remind Hartmann of an older case. A year earlier, Hartmann had defended a certain Bormann, who had raped his stepdaughter and after his acquittal, for lack of evidence, murdered a prostitute. But the judge is not infallible either. As a result of her misjudgment, a man was imprisoned for five years, innocent. After all, her husband André has had enough of her self-righteousness and packs his things.
When Lamberg's former lover Anette Hollenkamp describes Lamberg as a choleric violent man in court, the tide turns again. Hartmann also begins to doubt her client's innocence. From the head of her law firm, Georg Sänger, who is also friends with Lamberg, she learns that several of Lamberg's secretaries have been sexually molested. In the interests of the law firm, Hartmann should nevertheless win the process. Meanwhile, judge Weiss learns from Hanni Koch that Sandra had accused her husband of rape two years earlier. However, Lamberg was at a London fair at the time and therefore could not possibly have mistreated his wife. Judge Weiss then meets with Hartmann and tells her about Hanni Koch's descriptions. Both women agree that rape likely took place at some point, but probably not that night. For lack of evidence, Lamberg is eventually acquitted. While Judge Weiss comes home, where her returned husband is already waiting for her, Hartmann sits alone and thoughtfully on a bench at the sports field.
background
Director Matti Geschonneck and screenwriter Magnus Vattrodt had previously worked together successfully for the television film Liebesjahre (2011), which was awarded the Grimme Prize . The idea for The End of the Night came to Vattrodt while talking to a lawyer and his client. Interviews with the Berlin lawyer Ferdinand von Schirach also served as a source of inspiration for Vattrodt. The Kachelmann process is, however, not been a template according Vattrodt. He had already started the script before the trial. The Kachelmann case nevertheless illustrates the subject of the film, which is “not primarily” about “violence in marriage”, but rather about the “process of establishing the truth”. Compared to typical court films, this is much more difficult in reality, so that in the end it often means: "In case of doubt, for the accused."
The shooting took place from August 9th to September 12th 2011 in Cologne and Düsseldorf .
reception
Audience ratings
The first broadcast on March 26, 2012 was seen by a total of 6.07 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 18.3 percent for ZDF; In the group of 14- to 49-year-old viewers , 0.98 million viewers and a market share of 7.6% were achieved.
Reviews
"A clever, precise and carefully made film - exciting to the point of breathlessness," wrote Klaudia Wick from the Berliner Zeitung about The End of a Night . Barbara Auer sums up “both wonderfully”: “The righteousness and the handbrake on”. With Ina Weisse she is facing an "equal actress", "who can give the coolness like no other without looking like a block of ice". As “masters of this chamber play”, director Matti Geschonneck and camerawoman Judith Kaufmann “did without the usual stylistic devices”. Instead, there is "cinema in the head and a doubt that as a leading actor would have earned all German television awards at once".
Lorenz Jäger from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the film turned out to be a “godsend in television entertainment” thanks to the “calculation and economy of the plot” and thanks to the “two strong female personalities”. Christian Buß from Spiegel Online was of the opinion that “a grueling duel” was developing between the judge and the lawyer, “which went beyond the usual TV framework”. As a “perfectly formed modernization of Otto Preminger's courtroom classic Anatomy of a Murder ”, the film keeps the “actual course of the evening” open until the end.
For the lexicon of international films , The End of a Night was a "[s] perturbing, high-class cast (television) court drama". According to TV Spielfilm , the "clever, versatile judicial thriller [...] shows the difference between law and justice" and shows "a courage to draw, which is rare on TV". Instead of “an easy judgment” there is “TV to think along with”. Prisma described The End of a Night "as an intelligent film in which everything is right - starting with the topic, through the dramaturgy to the technical implementation".
Awards
The End of a Night was awarded the German TV Prize for Best TV Film in 2012 and thus prevailed over Florian Schwarz ' Hannah Mangold & Lucy Palm and Johannes Fabrick's The Last Beautiful Day . The two leading actresses Barbara Auer and Ina Weisse , who were nominated together in the Best Actress category, were also able to hold their own against the competition and win the award. Barbara Auer was also nominated for the Bambi in the category Best National Actress in 2012 .
When television Film Festival Baden-Baden competed The end of a night at the 3sat Audience Award, but lost this time the film The Last beautiful day . Matti Geschonneck's court film was also nominated for the Günter Rohrbach Film Prize, which Barbara Auer and Ina Weisse were able to win together in the actor's category. In 2013, Das Ende einer Nacht was awarded the Golden Camera in the category Best TV Film, while Ina Weisse was nominated for Best German Actress. In the same year he won the Grimme Prize in the “Fiction” category, which was given by name to screenwriter Magnus Vattrodt, director Matti Geschonneck and Ina Weisse and Barbara Auer.
Web links
- The end of a night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The end of a night at filmportal.de
- Interview with Matti Geschonneck and Ina Weisse : Mr and Mrs filmmakers . In: TV feature film
- Pictures of the film on tvspielfilm.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Marie-Luise Braun: Conversation with Grimme Prize winner Magnus Vattrodt . In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , April 22, 2012.
- ↑ The end of a night on networkmovie.de
- ↑ quotemeter.de : Primetime-Check: Monday, March 26th, 2012 , accessed on August 19th, 2014.
- ↑ Klaudia Wick : Duel in court . In: Berliner Zeitung , March 26, 2012.
- ↑ Lorenz Jäger : He could be trusted, wouldn't it? . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 25, 2012.
- ↑ Christian Buß : ZDF court drama "The End of a Night": When in doubt for the macho? . spiegel.de, March 26, 2012.
- ↑ The end of a night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ cf. tvspielfilm.de
- ↑ cf. prisma.de