The Other (1959)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The other |
 | |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | total 199 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joachim Hoene |
| script | Francis Durbridge (original), Marianne de Barde (German translation) |
| production | John Olden for NDR |
| music | Siegfried Franz |
| camera | Hans Grack , Johannes Jensen , Ulrich Ritter , Wolfgang Zeh |
| cut | Helga Stump |
| occupation | |
| |
The other is a six-part German crime film from 1959. It started a series of Durbridge films that became street sweepers in Germany in the 1960s . The director of the film, shot by NDR on behalf of the NWRV, was Joachim Hoene .
action
The teacher David Henderson receives a small package with a wristwatch. He makes an appointment with a certain Cooper and they drive to a houseboat, where he removes a dead man's watch and exchanges it for his new one. The police are later on the boat and examine the body. She is identified as the boat's tenant, an Italian named Paolo Rocello, whose head was knocked in from the front. The owner of the boat, a man named Cooper, is nowhere to be found and is unknown to the law firm he was supposed to work for.
Inspector Ford comes across a witness who saw someone on the houseboat. Miss Walters, the niece of doctor Dr. Sheldon, happens to see the man again shortly afterwards and identifies him as Henderson. This gets the inspector in trouble because his son owes his free tutoring to the teacher who made it to Medlow College. A questioning by Ford is unpleasant, as Henderson denies everything and gives evasive answers. As soon as the inspector left, Cooper appears and tells Henderson that Miss Walters had only recently been to Venice. Rocello was also from Venice and Henderson had been there for a few years during the war. Cooper instructs him to see his doctor, Dr. To consult Sheldon under a pretext and to take a close look at the lady.
In the meantime the inspector finds another connection between the murdered Italian and Henderson. On the back of the dead man's watch is a motto that was also written in a book that Ford's son borrowed from the teacher. Then a man named Ralph Merson reports to the police. He confesses to Ford that he was flinging on a houseboat near Cooper's boat that night in question. He reports that he and his friend Billie Reynolds saw two men at night carrying Rocello, whom they thought was drunk, onto the boat. During a visit from Ford, Miss Reynolds asserts that she did not recognize any of the men, but appears shortly afterwards at Henderson's and confronts him with the fact that she has observed him. She asks him to visit her on her houseboat and teach her to play chess.
Henderson appears with a game of chess and a bottle of champagne. After Billie Reynolds drinks a glass of the sparkling wine, she collapses. The teacher removes the traces of his visit and gives someone a signal, but he overlooks a fallen chess piece.
A journalist named Robin Craven receives an anonymous tip on Rocello's past. During the war, he was a member of a submarine and combat diving unit of the Italian Navy. To the annoyance of the police, he published the news in the newspaper without informing them beforehand. When confronted, he shows them an unsigned note with the diver's notice that someone sent him. The writing on it corresponds to Henderson's, which even a graphologist confirms, but here too the teacher denies being the author.
Meanwhile, Chris Reynolds wants to visit his stepsister Billie on her houseboat, but finds no trace of her. After she has disappeared, he goes to Inspector Ford and also gives him the chess tower found on the houseboat. Ford's son identifies him as one of Henderson's. But this time, too, he denies having been on the boat and presents the inspector with a full game of chess.
Then Merson receives an anonymous letter, apparently again in Henderson's handwriting, with an earring from Billie Reynolds and the message that the other earring can be found in Hallows-End Bay. The police search leads to the discovery of Billie's body. When questioning Henderson, he seems really surprised and wants to find out how the woman died. Even with Dr. Sheldon, who has examined the body, is therefore present.
Shortly afterwards, the teacher receives a visit from Chris Reynolds. He found his sister's diary, which also includes Henderson's name. He tries blackmail, but Henderson insists on seeing the diary first. When Inspector Ford's assistant, Sergeant Broderick, later wants to visit Chris Reynolds on Billie's houseboat, he finds the boat searched and the young man has disappeared.
Maria Rocello, the sister of the dead frogman, appears in Medlow to find out why her brother was murdered. Henderson contacts Cooper to report that he has the diary and learns of Maria Rocello's arrival. He is instructed to take care of her and then invites her to his home. He makes sure that she is indeed Paolo Rocello's sister and arranges for her a phone call with Cooper. That same evening, she informed Sergeant Broderick, astonished, that she was leaving. She does not give any further reasons for this.
The case is resolved when the handwriting expert discovers that the reference to Billie's body was not written by Henderson, but is a good forgery. Shortly afterwards, Ford receives a visit from a former colleague named Harry Vincent, who allegedly had retired but has actually switched to the secret service. He introduces him to another secret service colleague who goes by the nickname "The Other": David Henderson. They initiate Ford.
Paolo Rocello has not only been a combat diver, he is also working on a way to disable an anti-divers weapon. Henderson met him during his time in Venice and secured his services for the British secret service. With other people after him and his development work, his death was staged with a strange corpse that Henderson and Cooper brought to the houseboat overnight. All they forgot was Rocello's watch with the engraved family motto, which is why Henderson had to get on the boat again the following day and was seen by Miss Walters. Henderson had drugged Billie Reynolds and brought him to London to take another witness from the line of fire. Unfortunately, they couldn't prevent her from returning to Medlow anyway, where she was killed by her local adversary. Billie Reynolds apparently knew him very well and could have been dangerous to him, in her diary a person called R. is mentioned again and again. Obviously, this is not Ralph Merson, who appears as a "dandy" in the diary.
The two intelligence agents and Ford decide to set a trap for their prime suspect. They are helped by reporter Craven, who breaks into the person at night and steals incriminating material. The next morning, Merson appears to the police and reports that his home has been searched. Later when Sergeant Broderick is with Miss Walters to take a testimony, Doctor Sheldon rushes in to get his doctor's bag. He says Merson had a car accident and that the sergeant should call the hospital. Before he leaves, he gives Miss Walters Merson's wallet, in which she finds a letter from Billie Reynolds to Broderick and a photo of the two. She confronts the sergeant, who then threatens her and admits to having killed Billie Reynolds. But Miss Walters flees in time and Broderick is overwhelmed by the police.
In reality, Craven had stolen the letter and picture from Broderick's apartment, but had left a Ralph Merson handkerchief behind. Therefore, the Sergeant Merson's apartment had ransacked and reacted to the staged story with Merson's accident and the found wallet and thus finally betrayed himself.
Remarks
In the 1950s, Francis Durbridge became known in Germany for his radio plays about the writer and detective Paul Temple . 1959 was the first time one of his books was made into a film for German television, this time a story without Temple. The film was broadcast on ARD for the first time between October 5th and 16th at intervals of two or three days in six episodes about 30 minutes long. This first film was not as successful as the following adaptations. The films ran repeatedly in the regional and special interest channels of the ARD at longer intervals.
Leading actor Albert Lieven played the role of the main suspect again two years later in The Scarf and was then seen two more times in Durbridge films in The Keys and Like a Lightning . Wolf Frees played in 1961 in the first season of the television series Permit, my name is Cox also the role of the inspector who tries to prove the innocent Cox crime. In 1970 he made an appearance in an episode in the Durbridge series Paul Temple . For Heinz Klingenberg it was the last role, he died before the series was broadcast.
For director Joachim Hoene it was the first major television work, but the only Durbridge film adaptation. For him there is still another directorial work to be done for television, the following year he shot the television play Terror in Waage , another secret service story based on an English play. Westdeutscher Rundfunk went into production for the next Durbridge film Es ist So Far , and the successful time of director Hans Quest began .
Further films
The other was first filmed in 1956 under the original title The Other Man as a multi-part series for English television.