The lost one
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The lost one |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1951 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Peter Lorre |
| script | Peter Lorre, Benno Vigny , Axel Eggebrecht |
| production | Arnold Pressburger -Filmproduktion, Hamburg |
| music | Willy Schmidt-Gentner |
| camera | Václav Vich |
| cut | Carl Otto Bartning |
| occupation | |
| |
The Lost is a German feature film from 1951. It is the only film that the actor Peter Lorre also directed himself. The film is based on a number of true events.
action
In the post-war period, the busy doctor Neumeister met a former colleague in a refugee camp. The wanted Nazi Hösch is now called Novak, Neumeister has also given up his original name Rothe. The run-down Novak promises help from the camp doctor, as he would have done him a favor once. Rothe then rolls out their common history during National Socialism .
There is a flashback to Hamburg in December 1943. Dr. Rothe is a serum researcher . For the Nazis, his work is secret and important to the war effort. His fiancée Inge spies on his research and begins a relationship with Rothe's colleague Hoesch, who has been smuggled into the laboratory by the defense . When Rothe learns of her betrayal, he murders her emotionally . But the Nazis protect the important researcher from conviction, even though he feels guilty and no longer wants to live. Hösch covers him and thus prevents Dr. Rothes. In a mixture of disgust, boredom and feelings of guilt, Rothe murders a strange woman who tries to ensnare him in the empty S-Bahn during an air raid .
Since Rothe sees himself as a monster, he wants to kill himself - but first he tries to shoot Hösch and his superior Colonel Winkler. When he appears in Colonel Winkler's villa, he finds out that he and a resistance group are planning an attack on the National Socialists. Through his appearance, Rothe unconsciously put Hösch on the trail of the group. Hösch has the resistance smashed, Colonel Winkler is hanged. Meanwhile, Rothes house has been destroyed in a bomb attack, killing his young lodger Ursula and Ilse's mother. He can also easily pretend to be dead by destroying the house. Hösch does not allow anyone to look further for the scientist.
Back in the presence of the camp, Rothe believes that he has finally found someone in Hösch who will understand his psychological situation. Hösch has not changed and feels that Rothes guilt feelings are out of place, instead he brags about the murder of Colonel Winkler and wants to leave the past behind without hesitation. Rothe then shoots Hösch and then judges himself by standing in front of a train.
background
The film was shot in December 1950 and January 1951 in the Heidenau refugee camp in the Lüneburg Heath . The Atelier Hamburg-Heiligengeistfeld and Atelier Hamburg-Bendestorf served as studios . The buildings were taken care of by Franz Schroedter and Karl Weber , and Heinz Abel was the production manager . The premiere of the film took place on September 7, 1951 in Cologne .
The DVD, released in 2007, contains Harun Farocki's film Peter Lorre - The Double Face (1984) as bonus material as well as the documentary Displaced Person - The Making of Peter Lorre's Film by Robert Fischer, which deals in detail with the history of the making of The Lost and also includes contemporary witnesses as the actress Gisela Trowe has her say.
Reviews
The Lost was a failure with the public when it was released and also received only mixed reviews. Lorre was disappointed with the reception and returned to the United States. Since then, however, the film's reputation has grown significantly and it is mostly discussed positively today.
"Regardless of some weaknesses in the interlinking of the story and the psychopathological drawing, an atmospherically very dense and hauntingly hauntingly designed, excellently played film that is unparalleled in German post-war production and remained unrecognized for a long time."
“The dull shadows of the past that slowly creep up, the different characters of the two main actors as well as the detailed considerations about fear, guilt and atonement create a dense tension within which, in retrospect, a deeply enigmatic story reveals itself at the beginning of the film as real happen is reported. With this introduction, director Peter Lorre underscores his occasionally quite provocative concern of challenging the then young post-war Germany to a thorough examination of its recent past - in vain, because The Lost found hardly an audience at the time and after just a few days of playing the Program taken. "
“With this film, German post-war history has been shown as precisely as it is only possible for someone who was himself a victim and plays a perpetrator who knows he is to blame. Lorre has also addressed his own story as an actor and his tough experiences as an emigrant and interwoven them with the film in an exciting way. The film diagnoses what was to remain Lorre's fate from then on: He could no longer find a place. "
Awards
- The Lost was the first film to be checked and rated by the Wiesbaden film evaluation office . It received the rating "valuable". The reasoning states, among other things: The plot is designed with such an unusual urgency, the acting performance of Peter Lorre and the other forces employed, the direction and the camera are of a cinematic expressiveness that hardly any foreign film from the post-war period has shown . In addition to this particularly artistic achievement, however, there is also the tendency of the film, which shows in such an absolutely necessary and urgent way the destruction of the individual that a dictatorial state can lead to.
- Peter Lorre received an honorable mention at the 1952 Federal Film Prize .
Web links
- The Lost in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The lost one at filmportal.de
- The lost one in the lexicon of international film
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Bauer : German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , p. 230 f.
- ↑ The lost one. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Marie Anderson: A Moloch of Moral Modalities ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , kino-zeit.de
- ↑ http://www.ulrikeottinger.com/index.php/peter-lorre-der-verlorene.html
