The Commissioner: Gray and red morning

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Episode of the series The Commissioner
Original title Gray-red morning
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 ZDF
length 60 minutes
classification Episode 38 ( List )
First broadcast October 1, 1971 on ZDF
Rod
Director Theodor Graedler
script Herbert Reinecker
production Helmut Ringelmann
music Herbert Jarczyk (title melody)
camera Rolf Kästel
cut Werner Preuss
occupation

Grau-Rote Morgen is a German crime drama from the ZDF television series Der Kommissar that was broadcast in 1971 . In addition to the regular cast around Erik Ode as Commissioner Keller, Lilli Palmer and Hans Caninenberg play the parents of a daughter who is sinking in the drug swamp, played by Sabine Sinjen .

action

An elderly gentleman is walking his sheepdog along the Isar in the morning when he sees a dead woman lying on the bank grass with a guitar by her side. The woman looks like she is sleeping, but the man immediately notifies the police. Inspector Keller and his team are approaching. The identity of the young woman is quickly clarified: It is Sybille Larasser, a drug addict. Keller and his assistants Heines and Klein meet their mother in front of Sybille's apartment. She is thunderstruck when she hears of her daughter's death, although she herself has always expected this bad news. Because Mrs. Larasser knew about Sibylle's drug addiction. However, she was stunned that she was shot.

Ms. Larasser actually lives in Augsburg, but lately has been in Munich more and more often to keep an eye on her daughter, who is slipping more and more into the drug swamp. Hilde Larasser now tells in detail about her tireless struggle over the past twelve months to support her daughter in the fight against the heroin that Sybille had injected regularly and from which she simply could not get away. Despite all of Hilde's efforts, Sybille showed himself to be too unstable to regain ground under her feet with her own strength. On the contrary: Mother Hilde had to watch how her meek daughter slipped more and more from her and slipped deep into misery.

Hilde Larasser's husband is of little help in the fight to save Sybille. The Augsburg businessman has long since given up on his daughter and clearly began to look at and critically question the meaningless commitment of his wife with increasing concern. “I now know what hell looks like,” says the lion mother, Ms. Larasser, looking back after a year of striving for her daughter. In the end, Hilde Larasser even went so far as to put the syringe on her daughter's arm because she could no longer bear the misery of her daughter, who had been deprived for several days, and she complied with her plea for help with inserting the needle. Inspector Keller is investigating several leads in this murder case, interviewing Sybille's contacts in the drug environment in the presence of Ms. Larasser. But none of these surveys lead to a hot lead.

In the meantime, Mr. Larasser has traveled to Munich. Less to pay a final farewell visit to his dead daughter than to bring his wife back to Augsburg. He just wants his wife Hilde to finally relax, as he puts it, and lets it shine through that he is happy that everything is finally over. It seems that the unstoppable decline of Sybille also put a massive strain on her parents' marriage, and that Mr. Larasser finally longed for an end to this drama. Finally, the broken man admits that he drove from Augsburg to Munich the night before Sybille was found on the banks of the Isar to fetch his wife home. Since he found neither his wife nor daughter in Sybille's apartment, he drove around in his car. Mr Larasser also knew one typical place where Sybille lived: the Isar. When he saw her strolling across the river on the gray-red morning of the new day, apparently aimlessly, Larasser shot his daughter in order to finally put an end to all the misery.

Production notes

Grau-Rote Morgen was made in Munich and was broadcast on Friday evening at 8:15 p.m. on October 1, 1971 on ZDF and ORF 1 .

Wolf Englert , together with Margret Finger, provided the equipment, Helmut Holger designed the costumes. Rüdiger Meichsner assisted chief cameraman Rolf Kästel . Composer Mike Kennedy wrote the song "Louisiana".

Gray-red morning marked Lilli Palmer's debut on German television. In contrast to most of the other commissioner episodes, which focus on the investigative work of Commissioner Keller's team, the film is completely geared towards the cosmopolitan Hollywood star with German roots. Lilli Palmer appears after just 3 minutes 20 seconds and is then omnipresent until the end of the episode.

useful information

The film, episode no. 38 of the popular crime series, achieved a sensational response (see section “Reception”) because it addressed the sensitive topic of drugs and drug abuse by young people in Germany, which had been consistently left out of mainstream entertainment at the time - here on the example of heroin - at the center of a high-profile television crime episode. As a result, an intensive discussion about the dangers of drug addiction started in the Federal Republic. In view of numerous requests for a quick repetition of this episode shortly after the first broadcast on ZDF and the fact that this topic was never ending, ZDF repeated Grau at an unusually early stage (on Saturday, February 5, 1972, early in the evening, so that young people at risk of drugs could also consume this film) -red morning . Further reruns on this station ran on June 2, 1979, July 22, 1983 (on the occasion of the death of Kommissar Keller actor Erik Ode), August 28, 1993 and February 22, 2007. "Gray-red morning" was also shown on 3sat on June 16, 1988, July 18, 1993 and February 22, 2009 as well as on ZDFneo on June 10, 2014.

reception

The criticism really turned up: the day after the broadcast, for example, the Hamburger Abendblatt , which on the broadcast day, October 1, 1971, had mossed in its program preview "Now the miracle commissioner is also active in social policy", enthusiastically wrote that the film " Too good for a thriller "and found that" Gray-Red Morning "would be" one of the best episodes of the series ". Even decades later it was said: "A masterpiece of German television entertainment."

The acting achievements were also recognized. In the large Personenlexikon of the film , which actually is committed exclusively to the cinema work, it said in Lilli Palmer's biography: "Great attention to the artist in 1971 was with her haunting, highly dramatic representation of the mother of a drug addict (Sabine Sinjen), the gray Red in Morning ', an episode of the ZDF television series' Der Kommissar', has to learn that her daughter, whose abandonment she fought tirelessly, was shot by her own father (Hans Caninenberg) out of pity. ”Sabine Sinjen's biography is in the same work: "In this ZDF crime series, she caused a sensation in 1971 alongside Lilli Palmer and Hans Caninenberg with the role of the heroin addicts murdered by her own father in the episode 'Grauroter Morgen'."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Gray-red morning" on fernsehserien.de
  2. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt of October 2, 1971
  3. ↑ Gray-red morning on funkhundd.wordpress.com
  4. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 128.
  5. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 7: R - T. Robert Ryan - Lily Tomlin. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 339.

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