The deadly eye

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Movie
Original title The deadly eye
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1993
length 180 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Detlef Rönfeldt
script Fred Breinersdorfer
production Norbert Sauer ,
Mario Krebs
music Klaus Doldinger
camera Klaus Eichhammer ,
Peter Steuger ,
Axel de Roche
cut Mareile Marx ,
Petra Blaeser
occupation

The Deadly Eye is a two-part German television film from 1992 . The film was produced by Westdeutsche Universum in Cologne on behalf of WDR. Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar played the main roles. Fred Breinersdorfer wrote the script . The film was broadcast on January 20 and 21, 1993 at prime time in the evening program of ARD. Directed by Detlef Rönfeldt .

action

The young lawyer Stefan Phillis has a criminal hobby: He secretly observes people around him during intimate activities. At the moment he is watching a young couple making love through a window in their apartment and filming them with a video camera. When the man draws the curtains, Phillis has to break off and looks around for a new object. In the process, he discovers a young woman who is half-dressed in the bathroom getting ready for the night. The next day he went to her apartment in the Cologne apartment building and wrote down her name: Vera Meerholtz.

In the old drugstore of his mother, who died last year, Phillis has set up a monitoring center where he evaluates and analyzes his films. Although the drugstore is actually closed, Vera Meerholtz suddenly appears to go shopping. Confused, Phillis serves his potential surveillance victim and sets off on a new “spanner tour” that evening. He installs a newly purchased camera that he can operate from his headquarters.

The former police officer Göllner is running for the upcoming local elections and advertises his commitment to ensure the safety of citizens. While he was still giving a fiery speech, an assassin threw a hand grenade into the crowd of election campaigners, killing the candidate Göllner. She can escape undetected. It's Vera Meerholtz. Visibly overwhelmed by her act of violence, she bursts into tears and vomits in her apartment. Phillis watches this and wonders what is wrong with her. So he secretly enters her apartment and lovingly touches her clothes, on which he does find blood. He also comes across the name "Sylvia Feld". He installs a surveillance camera in a socket and can thus take even more intimate pictures of his victim. However, he succeeds less in the intended nude scenes than in shots of everyday trifles. Vera throws clothes and other harmful material in the trash. From the media reports on the attack, he concludes that there is a connection with his observations. Although the 15,000 DM that the police offered as a reward would be right for him with his financial problems, he does not think about reporting Vera. On the contrary, he seeks her closeness and can even make friends with her. In the process, he learns that she lost her brother, whom she raised alone after the untimely death of her parents, a few years ago.

In the meantime, Phillis discovers from his secret observations that Vera may also intend to kill State Secretary Müller. As a lawyer, Phillis has access to court files and comes across a hostage situation in 1982 in which Göllner accidentally shot the hostage Harry Feld. It is clear to him that Vera is actually Harry's sister Sylvia and that she is about to avenge her brother. When he speaks to her about it, Vera threatens Phillis with a weapon and says: "Whoever stands in my way dies." But Phillis manages to stop Vera and he talks to her about the circumstances that led to her brother's death . Accordingly, for career reasons, Göllner wanted to capture the bank robber at all costs when he was taken hostage, "sacrificing" her brother in the process. Müller covered everything and opened no proceedings against Göllner. Phillis offers Vera to collect evidence against Müller in order to bring him down. He breaks into Göllner's house and can secure documents there about bribes incriminating State Secretary Müller. Vera still wants to take revenge in her own way, but a first attempt to kill Müller fails.

Phillis lets Vera know about his secret hobby in the hope of dissuading her from her plan. But they get into a massive argument and he knocks them down. If she does not want to be the woman who shares her life with him, then he will now get the reward that is on her. He locks her in the basement of the old drugstore and reports to Müller that he has information about the attack on him. In doing so, he tries to increase the reward to millions and installs surveillance technology in Müller's environment in order to eavesdrop on him unnoticed. He is informed in advance of Müller's plans and also learns that he does not comply with the investigating commissioner. While she follows the trail of Vera and sees the attack as a private act of revenge, Müller wants to distract from it and depicts it as a terrorist attack. Phillis makes an appointment with Müller and reveals himself to him as a witness to the attack on him. But instead of handing Phillis the reward, he wants to have him arrested for aiding and abetting. The only way he escapes this is by confronting Müller with the documents that he has seized from Göllners and that weighs heavily on him.

In the meantime, Vera manages to escape from her prison and, armed with a hand grenade, goes in search of Phillis. She finds his van, and when she breaks in, she overhears the negotiation between Phillis and Müller. In doing so, she has to find out that Phillis actually wants to hand her over to the police. Without further ado, she drives towards Phillis and Müller with the unlocked hand grenade in the transporter. Security guards can stop her and she dies in a hail of bullets. The van explodes and the Secretary of State and Phillis are dragged to their deaths.

Awards

Immediately after the broadcast, the two main actors were awarded the “Golden Gong” by the television newspaper “Gong”, a prize that was given sporadically and spontaneously by the Gong editorial team for outstanding performance on television.

The editorial team stated:

Susanne Lothar and Ulrich Mühe “delivered a brilliant, finely nuanced psychogram of two disturbed outsiders. With small but precise gestures, they depicted their despair, inner struggles and hopes and made clear their spiritual development up to the emotional catastrophe. "

Production notes

Ulrich Mühe, who played the lawyer Stefan Phillis, was married to Susanne Lothar, who played the role of Vera Meerholtz.

criticism

Roland Timm from the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: “What began rather slowly for the viewer and still had its lengths in the first part, becomes very gripping at the beginning of the second part under the direction of Detlef Rönfeldt, also because of the ice-cold imagery: From the cranky love story has suddenly become a solid political thriller. "

The critics of the television magazine TV Spielfilm were equally positive: “The two-part series by author Fred Breinersdorfer ('The Hammer Murderer', 'The Last Hope') has lengths in Part 1, but then picks up speed: The psychogram of two outsiders becomes a gripping political thriller . [Conclusion]: Emotional abysses in ice-cold images. "

Barbara Sichtermann's criticism at Zeit-Online was negative . She says: "A story like the 'Deadly Eye' stuffed full of spectacular items, from the mother complex to terrorism, from impotence to blackmailing millions, from panty fetishism to property speculation, has to fail" and has little to do with reality.

In SPIEGEL , Nicolas Festenberg judged quite differently : “Against commonplace attempts at appeasement, director Detlef Rönfeldt transformed the content of the original into images, mercilessly following the laws of aesthetics. On the one hand there is a terrorist (Susanne Lothar) who wants to avenge her brother. And on the other there is a mother’s boy (Ulrich Mühe), a disgusting peeper that his greed for the eyes drives into the woman’s frenzy. The perverse cunning of the voyeur is in no way inferior to the fiery revenge mania of women: their violence makes the violence of sensational spectators visible. Once again, Rönfeldt proves himself to be a master of the art of demonically illuminating a material - after the business crime thriller "Kupferfalle", which was held in poison blue. "

The gong wrote under the heading “Strong thriller about neurotics”: “The viewer was zoomed into the action and turned into a voyeur in the ARD two-parter“ Das tödliche Auge ”(book: Fred Breinersdorfer). Director Rönfeldt took a lot of time to build the plot and develop the characters. He managed a psychological crime thriller with an oppressive atmosphere and a steadily increasing thrill. The nifty story about the entanglement of two disturbed loners was brilliantly cast with Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar. A German production that can definitely compete with foreign suspense thrillers. "

Karl Prümm was particularly detailed in epd / church and radio . He called the film “a remarkable study of the close connection between normality and madness” and praised the “ambitious staging concept”, which “literally draws the viewer into the voyeurism of the viewing machines” through “close proximity”. His conclusion: "The medium needs such films that carry out their visual concept so consistently and create headstrong images that remain in the memory."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WDR press release 17/93 of January 29, 1993.
  2. ↑ Roland Timm roenfeldt_regie_auge_presse_sueddeutsche_zeitung.htm film review on roenfeldt.info accessed on August 24, 2014.
  3. ^ Film review at tvspielfilm.de accessed on August 24, 2014.
  4. ↑ Barbara Sichtermann Ohne Sinn, Halt, Maß on zeit.de, accessed on August 24, 2014.
  5. ↑ DER SPIEGEL, 3/1993.
  6. ↑ The Gong, February 1993.
  7. ↑ epd / Church and Radio, No. 7, January 30, 1993.