The Red Circle (1960)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The red circle |
| Original title | Den blodrøde cirkel / The red circle |
 | |
| Country of production |
Denmark , Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1960 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jürgen Roland |
| script |
Trygve Larsen , Wolfgang Quantity |
| production | Rialto Film ( Preben Philipsen ) |
| music | Willy Mattes |
| camera | Heinz Pehlke |
| cut | Margot Jahn |
| occupation | |
| |
Der Rote Kreis ( Danish title: Den blodrøde cirkel ) is a Danish-German crime film that was shot in and around Copenhagen in late 1959 under the direction of Jürgen Roland . The film adaptation of the novel of the same name (original title: The Crimson Circle ) by Edgar Wallace is the second German-language Edgar Wallace film of the post-war period . The world premiere took place on March 2, 1960 at Universum in Stuttgart .
action
In the prison of Toulouse sentenced for common robbery and murder Charles Henry Lightman is to be executed. But the guillotine is stopped by a nail that the obviously drunk executioner has driven into the guillotine and the convict escapes his sentence.
Eight years later, the “red circle” - the masked head of a brilliantly run criminal organization - terrifies the British capital, London . Wealthy citizens are repeatedly blackmailed. Anyone who does not comply with the payment requests or who goes to the police will be murdered. At the scene of the crime you can always find the symbol of the creepy syndicate, a red circle. Lady Doringham is also blackmailed by the unscrupulous criminal. She is supposed to replace the famous Doringham necklace that is in her husband's possession with a copy.
Mr. Beardmore, who has also received threatening letters, turns to the experienced detective Derrick Yale. Under pressure from the public, Scotland Yard boss Sir Archibald, chief inspector Parr, who is barely getting anywhere in the matter of the “red circle”, decides to put the private investigator aside. A little later, a certain Sir David also dies and Parr himself barely escapes an assassination attempt.
At Mr. Beardmore's estate, Yale and Parr meet his nephew Jack and his crush, the mysterious Thalia Drummond, who is on record at Scotland Yard as a thief and works as a secretary to the obscure Mr. Froyant. A Frenchman appears at the Beardmore Villa, who calls himself Felix Marles and is interested in Beardmore's vacant warehouse on the Thames . Although Sergeant Haggett should not let the blackmailed Lady Doringham out of sight, the red circle succeeds in the evening in silencing this witness forever. During the night, Mr. Beardmore, guarded by Yale and Parr, falls victim to the eerie phantom and in the morning a member of the criminal organization is poisoned in prison.
After Mr. Beardmore's funeral, Parr and Yale learn that Thalia Drummond's boss, Mr. Froyant, is being blackmailed by the “red circle”. Sergeant Haggett, meanwhile, looks around a London office building now owned by Beardmore's sole heir, Jack. Leslie Osborne's office is located in the building. In the evening, the “red circle” wins two new employees with the bankrupt bank director Brabazon and Thalia Drummond, who was dismissed by Froyant. Brabazon is supposed to bring registered banknotes to the people. Thalia is given the task of spying on Brabazon's bank as a cashier. There she meets the private detective Derrick Yale and the mysterious Felix Marles, who is murdered a short time later. Bank director Brabazon, who is run over by a truck, is no better off.
Suddenly Mrs. Carlyle appears at Jack Beardmore's, co-heiress and lover of the murdered uncle. Your child Dorothy was kidnapped by the "red circle". Meanwhile, Mr. Froyant, who was also blackmailed, travels to Toulouse and, disguised as a journalist, has the prison director there hand over the old documents on the Henry Charles Lightman case. On the way back he fell victim to a poison attack. When Mrs. Carlyle complies with the "red circle" request and pays the ransom for her daughter, Dorothy is actually released. It soon turns out, however, that lawyer Osborne took advantage of the general hysteria to blackmail his client, Mrs. Carlyle. Derrick Yale is "the red circle" aka Henry Charles Lightman, who was pardoned in Toulouse. Thalia Drummond is, in fact, the daughter of Chief Inspector Parr who spied on Yale. Mr. Froyant, who survived the poison attack on the train, had sent the records on Lightman to Jack Beardmore before he left. In the end, Jack and Thalia become a couple. But Lightman stands before the hangman for the second time.
History of origin
prehistory
Preben Philipsen , head of the Copenhagen-based Rialto Film and co-owner of Constantin Filmverleihs until 1955 , took over Prisma-Filmverleih in 1958 in order to gain a foothold on the German film market again. The production of a film series based on novels by the British writer Edgar Wallace was prepared in close consultation with Constantin Distribution. Philipsen initially acquired the film rights to the novels The Frog with the Mask and The Red Circle from Wallace's daughter Penelope Wallace with an option for further film adaptations. While the frog with the mask (director: Harald Reinl ) was brought to the cinemas by Constantin-Verleih, the red circle was to be marketed by Prisma-Filmverleih.
Pre-production and script
Even before The Frog with the Mask was to run successfully in cinemas from September 1959, Rialto Film was preparing the second Wallace film adaptation with Der Rote Kreis . The novel was first published in 1922 under the original title The Crimson Circle . The German first edition was published by Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag in 1927, and since 1954 the work has been available as Goldmanns Taschen-Krimi Volume 35 . It was the second film adaptation of the novel with German participation. In 1929 was directed by Friedrich Zelnik the silent film The red circle emerged.
Since Egon Eis had written a successful screenplay for The Frog with the Mask under the pseudonym Trygve Larsen , he was hired again as a writer. Looking for variety from the start, the young director Jürgen Roland , who had become famous a year earlier through the television series Stahlnetz , was engaged for the second Edgar Wallace film . The then 34-year-old was supposed to direct his first full-length feature film with Der Rote Kreis . The first version of the script was revised by the author Wolfgang Menge , who was a friend of Roland .
occupation
A new cast was also chosen for the main roles. Ulla Jacobsson was initially planned for the role of Thalia Drummond . At Jürgen Roland's request, Renate Ewert took over the part. Klausjürgen Wussow and Karl Georg Saebisch were seen in the leading male roles . The actors Ernst Fritz Fürbringer , Fritz Rasp , Eddi Arent and Ulrich Beiger had already participated in The Frog with the Mask . Thomas Alder acted under the mask of the “Red Circle” (as the trailer reveals) , while Friedrich Schütter contributed his voice .
production
The red circle was originally supposed to be filmed in the Göttingen film studio with outdoor shots in Hamburg . The shooting for the black and white film, which was produced in the widescreen format 1: 1.66, took place again in Copenhagen and the surrounding area in November and December 1959 . As with the predecessor, the studio recordings were also filmed in the Palladium studios in Hellerup ( Denmark ). The London recordings were already made as stock material for the predecessor The Frog with the Mask . For the Filmbauten was Erik Aaes , responsible for the costumes Lilo Hagen.
In reference to the television series directed by Jürgen Roland, a steel net can be seen in the background of the opening credits . The director also has a cameo as a police officer at the end of the film . It was the second and final Wallace adaptation, by the Danish Rialto Film Preben Philipsen S / A was produced. In the year of the premiere, the German subsidiary Rialto Film Preben Philipsen Filmproduktion und Filmvertrieb GmbH , based in Frankfurt am Main , took over the further production of the film series.
Film music
For the second and last time, Willy Mattes wrote the music for an Edgar Wallace film. On the CD Kriminalfilmmusik No. 4 is a digitally edited video recording of the theme music. The original recording tapes of the soundtrack are considered lost.
reception
publication
After cutting the scene in which Lady Doringham ( Edith Mill ) is strangled, the FSK released the film on March 2, 1960, from the age of 16. With 1.9 million viewers, the work , which premiered on March 2, 1960 in Stuttgart , was able to reap its production costs of around DM 600,000 (currently around EUR 1,420,834) several times. The red circle premiered on June 25, 1960 at the Zoo Palast in what was then West Berlin . The film was released on August 22, 1960 in Danish cinemas under the title Den blodrøde cirkel .
The film could be marketed in other countries and ran there under the following titles:
- Belgium , French title: Scotland Yard contre cercle rouge
- Belgium , Dutch title: Scotland Yard tegen de rode cirkel
- Brazil : O Círculo Vermelho
- Finland , Finnish title: Punaisen ympyrän mysteerio
- Finland , Swedish title: Mysteriet röda circles
- France : Scotland Yard contre cercle rouge
- Greece : O kokkinos kyklos
- Italy : Il cerchio rosso
- Portugal : O Mistério do Círculo Vermelho
- Spain : El círculo rojo
- Uruguay : El circulo de la muerte
- United States : The Crimson Circle / The Red Circle
After the success of The Frog with the Mask and The Red Circle , Gerhard F. Hummel , who was responsible for the Wallace productions at Constantin Filmverleih, arranged for Waldfried Barthel and Preben Philipsen to obtain all of the filming rights to Edgar Wallace's detective novels from Penelope Wallace secured. Parallel to the next Rialto productions, the film producer Kurt Ulrich was also preparing an Edgar Wallace adaptation, as he already owned the film rights to the novel The Avenger . On August 5, 1960, Europa-Filmverleih brought the film of the same name to cinemas. The next Rialto / Constantin production, Die Gang des Schrecken, followed just 20 days later, on August 25th.
The red circle was first broadcast on television on June 8, 1974 on ZDF . In the GDR the film first ran on May 7, 1987 on DFF 2 . For the DVD release of the unabridged original version, the age rating of the film was downgraded from 16 to 12 years in 2004.
Reviews
“It is precisely the gently antiquated nature of Wallace criminalistics that makes the main attraction, that exaggerating the arc of tension, that mystification of crime, that desolate bedside reading magic. The unleashed is what captivates Wallace. "
"A film entertainment that doesn't need to shy away from the light of the box office."
"A crime story staged in the old fashion (without standing above things), but with the necessary opacity, which with (not exclusively celebrity) actors [...] is quite exciting for a crime audience."
"Stahlnetz" director Jürgen Roland, who brought another Edgar Wallace film to the screen in 1960 with "The Green Archer", staged the horror thriller based on the novel "The Crimson Circle" with routine and no showmanship. "
"Opaque and exciting to the very end, this thriller has been grippingly staged with good actors."
"Goosebumps entertainment with routine tension effects."
literature
- Edgar Wallace: The red circle . German translation. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-00035-1 .
- Joachim Kramp , Jürgen Wehnert: The Edgar Wallace Lexicon. Life, work, films. It is impossible not to be captivated by Edgar Wallace! Verlag Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89602-508-2 .
- Joachim Kramp: Hello! This is Edgar Wallace speaking. The story of the legendary German crime film series from 1959–1972. 3. Edition. Verlag Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89602-645-3 .
Audio book
- Edgar Wallace - Filmedition 4. The legendary cinema classics in radio play form: The red circle / The green archer / Room 13. Maritime, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86714-236-6 .
Web links
- The red circle in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The red circle at filmportal.de
- The red circle ( memento from December 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) at deutscher-tonfilm.de
- Sound carrier with the film music (external link)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 92 minutes for cinema projection (24 images / second), 88 minutes for television playback (25 images / second), film length: 2508 meters (original version), 2505 meters (FSK version)
- ^ Joachim Kramp, Jürgen Wehnert: The Edgar Wallace Lexicon. Life - work - films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89602-508-2 , p. 97 .
- ↑ a b Joachim Kramp: Hello! This is Edgar Wallace speaking. The history of the crime film series from 1959 to 1972. Third, revised and expanded edition . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89602-645-3 , p. 69-77 .
- ↑ CD crime film music No. 4 . BSC Music. 2000. Order no. 398.6560.2
- ↑ Release certificate for The Red Circle . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2004 (PDF; test number: 21 724 DVD).
- ↑ Hung instead of beheaded . In the Ufa Palace: "The red circle". In: Hamburger Abendblatt . April 6, 1960, p. 8 ( PDF file; 1.9 MB ).
- ↑ The red circle . In: Paimann's film lists . No. 2539 , April 27, 1960 ( online ).
- ^ A film review by Thomas Ays at moviesection.de
- ↑ The red circle. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 18, 2016 .
