The Odessa Files (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The Odessa files |
| Original title | The Odessa File |
 | |
| Country of production | Great Britain , FR Germany |
| original language | English , German |
| Publishing year | 1974 |
| length |
German Theatrical Version: 120 minutes, Original Version: 130 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ronald Neame |
| script |
Kenneth Ross George Markstein |
| production | John Woolf |
| music | Andrew Lloyd Webber |
| camera | Oswald Morris |
| cut | Ralph Kemplen |
| occupation | |
| |
The Odessa Files is a British - German film from 1974. The fictional thriller by director Ronald Neame is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth and describes a Hamburg journalist's hunt for a war criminal and former concentration camp commandant.
action
In 1963, the Israeli secret service Mossad sent an agent to Germany to find a company that was developing a missile guidance system for Egypt , which was hostile to Israel . The secret service information says that the organization called Odessa is behind it.
In Hamburg, the journalist Peter Miller November 22, 1963, the day of the murder learns of John F. Kennedy , the suicide of German Jews Salomon Tauber. The detective Karl Braun, who is on friendly terms with him, leaves him the dead man's diary . In it he reads about the inhumanities that the late Salomon Tauber had to witness and suffer in the Riga ghetto . In particular, the lines describe the atrocities of the Commander Eduard Roschmann, called the Butcher of Riga . When Miller reads about an incident in the port of Riga in which Roschmann shot an officer of the Wehrmacht , he is puzzled.
Miller decides to investigate Roschmann's whereabouts. Neither the refusal of his editor-in-chief to give him an order nor the worried remarks by his girlfriend Sigi and his mother can keep him from doing so. A friend of the dead man tells him that Roschmann is still alive. He also learns about the existence of the Odessa. However, he does not receive any further information from the responsible public prosecutor, as the person he was speaking to, Chief Public Prosecutor Gernot, is a member of a comradeship of former SS members. When Miller entered one of their meetings that evening, he was thrown out.
Odessa, who sees their progress with the steering system endangered by Miller's research and wants to protect Roschmann, decides to get the reporter out of the way. An assassination attempt to push Miller in front of a moving train on the Hamburg subway fails.
Despite this incident, Miller went to Vienna , where he succeeded in getting to Simon Wiesenthal . He got his address over the phone from his friend at the Hamburg police. His employee Kunik, also a former SS man, witnessed the conversation and informed his friends at the Odessa.
Miller receives more detailed information from Wiesenthal about Odessa and about Roschmann's life after the end of the war . When he returns to his hotel , he is approached by a man who strongly warns him not to investigate any further.
On the way back to Germany, Miller is overwhelmed and kidnapped by several men at a rest area. As it turns out, they work for the Mossad and have been trying to place people in Odessa for a number of years, but so far this has always ended with exposure and murder. Miller finally agrees to be smuggled into the Nazi secret organization. For this purpose he assumes the identity of the former SS member Rolf Günther Kolb, who died in a Bremen hospital . In addition, he is subjected to a hard drill to learn the manners, customs and history of the SS and the biography of his new identity.
In the meantime, the Odessa has hired the hit man Mackensen to find Miller and kill him. Mackensen ambushes the reporter's girlfriend in the Old Elbe Tunnel to get information about Miller's whereabouts. However, Sigi does not know anything and can escape. Fittingly, the car that enables her to escape is driven by detective Kunik of all people. Using the pretext of placing Sigi under police protection, he succeeds in placing a police officer who is also loyal to the police in her apartment.
Using a bogus letter of recommendation, Miller alias Kolb seeks out the high-ranking Odessa functionary Franz Bayer, who thoroughly checks his identity, which he is ultimately convinced of. He sends it to the printer and passport forger Klaus Winzer in Bayreuth to give Kolb a new identity. Miller, however, is forced to stay in Bayreuth for a few days because the necessary photographer is prevented. Before his trip, however , Miller made the mistake of calling his friend in Hamburg at the Munich train station, which her "protector" overhears. As a result, the Odessa quickly discovers the true identity of her supposed comrade and sends Mackensen to Bayreuth to murder Miller there. Miller is lured into the print shop under the pretext that the photographer is now available. However, he is suspicious and can gain access to the residential building attached to the print shop. Here he meets the bedridden mother of the printer, who thinks he is a clergyman because of his black clothes and confidently tells him that her son has secretly created a file to protect himself from the Odessa ( the Odessa file from which it is named ) containing information about all the SS -Contains members who have been given a new identity through it.
Miller finally manages to kill Mackensen waiting for him in the workshop in a duel. He gets the files from the safe , the combination of which he also got from his mother. The records also contain information about Roschmann and his new identity as managing director of an electronic device company. For his own protection, he decides to deposit the files at Munich Central Station and initially only to send the Roschmann files to the Mossad agents, who thus know the name and the location of the company responsible for the Egyptian missile guidance system. He gives the locker key to his girlfriend, with whom he meets in Heidelberg . In the event of his death, Sigi should immediately hand over the files to Simon Wiesenthal.
Roschmann's company has invited to the opening of a company exhibition on the latest electronic technologies, to which Miller gains access. He finally succeeds in bringing Roschmann at gunpoint in his country estate. The latter initially denies his true identity and, when this does not help, tries to appeal to Miller's patriotic sentiments. Even that bears no fruit and Miller finally reveals the real motivation for his hunt. The captain whom Roschmann shot in the port of Riga towards the end of the war was Miller's father. This makes it clear to Roschmann that his counterpart cannot be dissuaded from his actions with any arguments, and he takes up a weapon. In the subsequent exchange of fire, Miller succeeds in killing the butcher of Riga and his father's murderer.
With the file, Simon Wiesenthal's organization succeeds in convicting some of the most important SS men. Roschmann's company falls victim to an arson attack and Egypt does not receive a missile guidance system. Miller finally travels to Israel with Marx, Salomon Tauber's friend, to say a kaddish for the deceased at the Yad Vashem memorial .
background
- Producer John Woolf , screenwriter Kenneth Ross and film editor Ralph Kemplen had already worked together on another Forsyth film, The Jackal , a year earlier .
- Eduard Roschmann's flight from the authorities, described in the novel and film, largely corresponds to historical facts. The real butcher of Riga, however, died in Paraguay in 1977 . Rumor had it that he was killed by the Odessa itself, who saw their existence threatened by the media hype the film sparked. However, since historians doubt the existence of such a central secret organization ( see Organization of Former SS Members ), this cannot be proven beyond doubt.
- Simon Wiesenthal was involved as a consultant in the production of the film.
- Filming locations were Hamburg , Salzburg (including Wasserschloss Anif ), Munich , Delmenhorst and Heidelberg as well as the film studios Bavaria Film , Grünwald , and Pinewood Studios , Buckinghamshire , England .
- Both the German cinema version and all broadcasts on German television have been cut. Among other things, scenes of Roschmann's atrocities in the concentration camp are missing. The German DVD is uncut, but the missing scenes were not dubbed in German and are provided with German subtitles.
- The Arcadia Clinic in Delmenhorst , which Miller uses for his legend, plays a key role . This clinic is purely fictional.
- In the German version, actor Jon Voight is dubbed by actor Christian Brückner .
Reviews
"An excitingly staged political thriller, with good acting performances, but sometimes gossip-like and lengthy."
“The plot, dialogues and psychology in the 'Odessa Files' are superficial and stupid; Mockery and scorn of the English review are only too justified. [...] Jon Voight makes a pale Simmel hero, unlikely in almost every scene , a number of prominent German actors caricature the old and young Nazis as in the smear theater, and Maximilian Schell, [...] becomes unbelievable from the script and direction, im Basically outrageous SS-Knattercharge damn it. "
Trivia
- The German actor Michel Jacot doubled as stuntman Jon Voight in several scenes.
- The actor Wolfgang Lukschy made a brief appearance at the meeting of the Siegfried Division as Sturmbannführer Kranz.
Web links
- The Odessa File in Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Odessa files at filmportal.de
- Comparison of the cut versions of the German theatrical version - FSK 12 DVD of The Odessa Files at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ IMDb
- ↑ Comparison of the cut versions of the German theatrical version - FSK 12 DVD of The Odessa Files at Schnittberichte.com
- ↑ The Odessa Files. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Wolf Donner: Mercy with the Nazis , in: Die Zeit from February 14, 1975, accessed on February 20, 2015