The Tiger

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Movie
German title The Tiger
Original title The Enforcer
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1951
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Bretaigne Windust ,
Raoul Walsh (anonymous)
script Martin Rackin
production Milton Sparrow
music David Buttolph
camera Robert Burks
cut Fred Allen
occupation

Der Tiger , Original: The Enforcer , in England as Murder, Inc. and in France La femme à abattre , is an American feature film from 1950/51. The director was Bretaigne Windust , the script and script are by Martin Rackin . The thriller belongs to the Black Series with Humphrey Bogart ; in addition, Zero Mostel , Ted de Corsia , Everett Sloane , Roy Roberts play as Bogart's partner Capt. Frank Nelson, King Donovan , Lawrence Tolan , Patricia Joiner , Susan Cabot .

action

The action takes place in a fictional American city ​​and includes flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks.

Joe Rico is brought into a courthouse under the strictest security precautions. He is to testify the next morning against the alleged gang boss Albert Mendoza. An attempt to have him murdered by a sniper just fails. Prosecutor Martin Ferguson warns the panicked Rico to pull himself together and has him locked in a cell with a police station. Rico escapes through the bathroom window and accidentally falls to his death. Ferguson now only has the night until the trial to find something incriminating against Mendoza from the evidence. Otherwise it has to be released. A flashback shows James "Duke" Malloy confessing to the police that he killed his girlfriend as part of a contract killing. He takes the police to an empty grave. He is arrested and hanged in the prison cell.

Ferguson begins the investigation and comes across "Big Babe" Lazick. He admits that he belongs to a group of contract killers who receive their orders from Rico. They receive a regular salary and the organization looks after them and their families even when they are in prison. The real boss is unknown to them.

In the absence of a relationship between them and the victims, nobody suspects them. The clients obtain alibis for the time of the crime.

Lazick leads the police to the body of Nina Lombardo, Malloy's friend. The murder is actually an assignment from "Duke" Malloy. However, he falls in love with her and cannot do the deed. Malloy's accomplices eventually force him to act. Nina's roommate Teresa Davis tells police that Lombardo's real name was Angela Vetto. Vetto has been in hiding since her father was murdered. She and her father witnessed the murder of John Webb ten years ago.

The police discover a mass grave and track down the gang of murderers. Mendoza begins to have the contract killers murdered. When Rico realizes that he is also threatened, he contacts Ferguson. As a key witness , he wants to avoid execution by making a testimony against Mendoza . Rico reports on his partnership with Mendoza and the first murder that Mendoza has committed himself: the victim was John Webb. The only witnesses were Vetto and his daughter, who were later eliminated.

Frustrated, Ferguson realizes that all the witnesses are dead and is close to giving up. He gives the unimpressed Mendoza the photos of Vetto's corpse and threatens that those faces will haunt him. Ferguson listens to the tapes with Rico's statement again and discovers a mistake: Rico spoke of Vetto's big blue eyes, but Nina Lombardo had brown eyes. He concludes that the killers mistook Vetto for her roommate and begins a hectic search for her. At the same time, Mendoza saw the photos and came to the same conclusion. Through his lawyer he arranges for his killers to search for and murder the real Vetto. In a dramatic showdown, Ferguson finally manages to save Vetto. With this witness, he finally succeeds in getting Mendoza on the electric chair .

Others

  • Just a few days after filming began, Raoul Walsh took over the direction of the sick Bretaigne Windust. In order not to rob his colleague of the fame he deserved, he did not want to be mentioned in the opening and closing credits of the film.
  • The real background was the story of and the proceedings against Louis Buchalter and his involvement in Murder, Inc. , who was the only big boss to be executed on the electric chair in Sing Sing on March 4, 1944 , after he had been convicted of two murders . Nothing happened to his mafia partner, Albert Anastasia .
  • The film is considered to be one of the most violent of its era.
  • In the original, the introduction is spoken by Estes Kefauver , an American politician and committee chairman of a committee to combat organized crime.
  • The net black and white playing time is around 81–87 minutes, depending on the version.

Quotes

  • The Kansas City headquarters now does everything itself.
  • ... when he sees those big blue eyes again.

Reviews

  • Exciting gangster film with an unusual pace. (...) A mirror of human depravity with unfavorable effects on unsteady viewers. - 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958 . Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism. 3. Edition. Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 430.
  • New York Times critic Bosley Crowther praised Bogart and Ted de Corsia's performance. However, he was also repelled by the brutality and criticized the film for the fact that the excessive violence ultimately bore the viewer.
  • Good camera, short dialogue, which sometimes - not always successfully - tries to strike a human tone, and police work, precisely as portrayed on an assembly line, are the hallmarks of this film. Protestant film observer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Critique in the New York Times from 1951 (Eng.)
  2. ↑ Ev. Munich Press Association, Review No. 206/1952