The man without a shadow (film)

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Episode in the series Joachim Vernau
Original title The man without a shadow
Country of production Germany
original language German
length 90 minutes
classification Episode 3 ( list )
First broadcast January 20, 2015 on ZDF
Rod
Director Carlo Rola
script Elisabeth Herrmann
production Jutta Lieck-Klenke
Dietrich Kluge
music Christian Brandauer
camera Frank Küpper
cut Friederike von Normann
occupation

Der Mann ohne Schatten is a German television film by Carlo Rola from 2014 with Jan Josef Liefers in the role of the Berlin lawyer Joachim Vernau. It is the third film adaptation of the Joachim Vernau series and is based on the novel of the same name by Elisabeth Herrmann .

action

Katherina Gebhardt instructs the lawyer Joachim Vernau to help her find her brother Martin. He has been missing for thirty years and she needs his signature to sell her parents' house. Due to various incidents, she is certain that her brother is still alive and is in Cuba .

Vernau travels with a power of attorney to Havana , where Gebhardt is supposed to live. As soon as he arrives he actually finds a trace of what he is looking for, but Gebhardt isolates himself. He is a man without a shadow , he learns from the attractive Anna-Maria Martinez, with whom Vernau meets in the hotel. When Vernau finally manages to meet Gebhardt after a few unsuccessful efforts and tells his client about it, she is sure that this man will not be her brother. Vernau, who accepts the order to have done with the waiver of any inheritance claims received from Gebhardt, is thus taught better. Without further ado, Katherina Gebhardt travels to Havana and can convince Vernau of her suspicion, because her alleged brother not only misspelled her first name, but also keeps dogs close by, even though the real Martin Gebhardt had a dog hair allergy . Vernau learns the background to the disappearance of Martin Gebhardt thirty years ago from his client: After a demonstration by the squatter scene on September 13, 1978, in which a police officer was killed, Martin fled to the GDR. There he was held in a mental health facility and his sister had never heard from him since. Vernaus research reveals that Martin Gebhardt was deliberately lured to the GDR on behalf of the Stasi by Dorothea Fröhlich at the end of the 1970s so that her ex-husband could relocate to the FRG under Gebhardt's name. She did not do this voluntarily, because Fröhlich had her daughter hostage and only under the condition that Dorothea Fröhlich kept silent about the matter, nothing would happen to her daughter, whose biological father was the real Martin Gebhardt. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Fröhlich continued to live under a false name and found shelter in Cuba, where he has remained undisturbed to this day, although from here he had betrayed US military secrets to the GDR for years.

When Katherina Gebhardt's presence in Havana threatens to reveal Fröhlich's true identity, the woman suddenly disappears without a trace. In the hope that she is still alive and that Fröhlich will keep her prisoner at his hacienda , Vernau calls in the authorities. He is now receiving support from Anna-Maria Martinez, who comes out as an officer in the Cuban armed forces and has been working on Gebhardt for some time to prove him corruption and illegal business with the USA. Together and with military support, they visit Gebhardt (alias Fröhlich). Katherina Gebhardt is actually in his house and he asks her to quietly leave the country without further ado. He never met her brother and as far as he knows, he hanged himself out of desperation when he realized that the woman he loved had basically betrayed him.

After Fröhlich is arrested by the Cuban officials, Vernau and Katherina Gebhardt return to Berlin.

background

The literary film adaptation was filmed from January 21 to February 26, 2014 in Berlin and Cuba .

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Der Mann ohne Schatten on January 20, 2015 on ZDF was followed by 7.20 million viewers, corresponding to a market share of 21.8 percent.

Reviews

Rainer Tittelbach from Tittelbach.tv wrote: “The first half of 'Der Mann ohne Schatten' in particular suffers dramaturgically from the one-dimensionality of its story, the linearity of the plot and the perspective of this ego trip abroad with the view of the stranger. But even in the second half it remains that Elisabeth Herrmann tells the story on a long thread, interrupted by compact explanatory scenes in which a few flashbacks are woven. "In the end, Tittelbach said The Man Without a Shadow " became an incredibly insignificant film, [...] who will get his audience, but who negligently gives away his topic. "

The critics of the TV magazine TV Spielfilm gave the best rating (thumbs up) and wrote: "Moderate crime thriller, but with an exciting substructure."

Sidney Schering fromquotemeter.de said: “After the rainy, cool pictures of the first two Vernau cases, 'The Man Without a Shadow' is not only a welcome change of scenery for the protagonist, […] The warm, light ones are also for the German crime thriller rustic images from Cuba like a vacation from everyday television life. ”But the whole thing weakens, because“ The dramatic substructure of this story, which half-heartedly tackles a dark chapter of German history ”,“ only becomes noticeable very late ”. "The dialogues repeat themselves all too often and thus capture the characters and the crime plot on the spot."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The man without a shadow. In: filmportal.de . Deutsches Filminstitut , accessed on January 5, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Rainer Tittelbach : Liefers, Levshin, Hübchen, Herrmann. A film that tells the wrong thing & the wrong thing at Tittelbach.tv , accessed on January 5, 2020.
  3. ↑ Short review at tvspielfilm.de , accessed on January 5, 2020.
  4. ↑ Sidney Schering: movie review at Quotenmeter.de , accessed January 5 2020th