The gentlemen ask for cash

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Movie
Original title The gentlemen ask for cash
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1966
length 235 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director John Olden
Claus Peter Witt
script Henry Kolarz
Robert Muller
production Egon Monk
music Heinz Funk
camera Gerald Gibbs
cut Oswald port judge
Gisela Quicker
Monika Tadsen-Erfurth
occupation

The gentlemen ask for cash is a three-part German television series. It was shot from the beginning of 1965 and first aired on February 8, 10 and 13, 1966. The film describes the spectacular postal train robbery in Great Britain on August 8, 1963, which was planned and carried out according to the general staff and the perpetrators the record loot of £ 2,631. 684 brought in (around 55 million pounds sterling or 61 million euros based on today's value ). Several of the mail robbers who were arrested were released from prison by their accomplices. The plot follows Henry Kolarz's reporting published in Stern magazine . The three-part series belongs to the genre of heist movies and was a real street sweeper when it was first broadcast .

At the same time, Die Gentlemen bitten zum Cashier is the name of the board game from the Schmidt Spiele publishing house , which appeared parallel to the film , in which two to six players have to steal sacks of money and bring them to safety.

The film received a sequel through the 1971 German television film Hooper's Last Hunt .

action

The plan

Archibald Arrow , gentleman manganove and owner of a barber shop, receives a tip from the sleazy tipster Twinky that large quantities of used notes are regularly brought from Glasgow to London by mail train , so that they can be destroyed there and replaced with new notes. Arrow receives this tip in the pub owned by gentleman thug Gerald "Jerry" Williams , who later also participates. Arrow convinces the antiques dealer Michael Donegan (in reality Bruce Reynolds ), called by everyone just "Major", and his partner Geoffrey Black , both also gentlemen, of the matter. Together with the painter Harry McIntosh, who creates copies of pictures for the antique shop of Donegan and Black, the wig maker Patrick Kinsey , the greengrocer and betting shop operator Thomas Webster , the pub owner Gerald Williams , the bookmaker Andrew Elton , the garage and gas station owner Ronny Cameron , the racing driver George Slowfoot and others plan the raid. In addition, they hire the three Fulham boys Walter Lloyd , Arthur Finegan and Alfred Frost , Walter Lloyd's brother-in-law, whom Mona places them. When Mona is an old friend of Michael Donegan, much taught him and with whom he has an illegitimate child. Walter Lloyd is responsible for the traffic light signal. Walter Lloyd makes it a condition that his brother-in-law Alfred Frost and Arthur Finegan (in reality: Ronald Biggs ) can participate.

In order to get “working capital”, they attacked a wage money transport at London Heathrow Airport and stole more than 50,000 pounds . Together with his long-time friend Suzy Fast , Archibald Arrow acquires a farm about 20 miles from the crime scene through the lawyer Peter Masterson , from where the gang started the attack on the mail train and where they crawled for a while. The former train driver Smiler Jackson shows you how to drive a locomotive and how to uncouple trains . Since the wagon with the money is not hanging directly behind the locomotive on the planned evening, the attack will be postponed for 24 hours. Likewise, the yield that night is not as high as the following night. This postponement of the mail robbery by 24 hours causes nervousness among the gentleman thugs, as the alibis prepared for this night have burst.

The raid

Except for a small incident with Smiler Jackson, the stopping of the train went smoothly. However, since the train driver causes difficulties, he is hit on the head by Archie Arrow with an iron bar. The locomotive and the wagon with the money are decoupled from the rest of the train as planned and driven to the next bridge . The staff of the car is kept under control, the money bags are thrown down from the bridge to three trucks and then loaded into them. Then the gangsters drive back to the farm where they have their shelter.

After the attack, only Michael Donegan and Patrick Kinsey (in reality Buster Edwards ), who always tried to keep calm and balance, kept a clear head. After a binge of drinking, the group splits into three parts: Michael Donegan, Geoffrey Black and their people, Archie Arrow and his people and the Fulham Boys as the third faction. The basically neutral Patrick Kinsey joins Archie Arrow, but actually only to "keep an eye on Archie's people". Kinsey promises the major when Arrow and his men leave the farm. The Donegan faction buries its stake in a cemetery, and the other two factions can get through the roadside controls unhindered.

The escape

Arrow's faction (Arrow, Kinsey, Webster, Elton, and Williams) is smuggled past the roadblocks by Inge Masterson, the attorney's wife, and crawls into the Mastersons, causing Inge Masterson to have a nervous breakdown.

Twinky , who is supposed to burn down the farmhouse, gets scared and goes into hiding . After paying £ 10,000, Donegan made it clear to him that he would not get his full share of the booty until the farm was burned down and Donegan found out about it through a coded ad with predetermined text in the " Times ". Twinky then anonymously denounced the gang at Scotland Yard .

Just before Donegan and Kinsey can burn down the farmhouse, they are discovered by the police . Almost the entire gang is caught by negligence and mistakes. The two Fulham boys, Lloyd and Frost, make the mistake of renting a garage for twice the amount of the asking price and wanting to pay cash in small pound notes. They also offer to pay the rent for several months in advance. Little did they know that their potential contract partner, Mrs. Stanley , is the widow of a police officer and still has good contacts with the Bournemouth police . Police also find evidence at Lloyd and Frost's holiday quarters in Bournemouth. The chief detective, Dennis McLeod , called by everyone just Mr. Mac , is amazed that Lloyd and Frost are among the perpetrators, even though these names were not mentioned on the anonymous call. Furthermore, Mr. Mac suspects that Twinky is the informer, but also knows that he only gives information anonymously to Scotland Yard.

A large part of the gang can be found fingerprints on objects from the Woodland farm, and Archie Arrow has the matching paint marks on his shoes, which were also used to paint the vehicles used. In a forest there is a travel bag with 100,000 pounds, in the side pocket of which is the address of the Mastersons. Only Patrick Kinsey , Ronald Cameron and Michael Donegan get away. His brother-in-law Geoffrey Black has to be released because the fingerprint on a Monopoly game that can be found on the farm is insufficient as evidence. After his acquittal, Geoffrey Black developed an unusual method of paying the prisoners' families out of the booty, called “pensions” by the gentleman crooks.

All the others, with the exception of the electrician Walter Lloyd , who gets “only” 20 years due to his admission of guilt, get draconian sentences of between 25 and 30 years in prison.

After all, it succeeds Donegan and Kinsey , Thomas Webster to free as disguised correctional staff. Arthur Finegan , stubborn in his own way, threatens to unpack if he is not freed. Donegan and Kinsey , who formed a kind of “emergency government”, hire a breakout committee, and Arthur Finegan - the cinematic equivalent of Ronald Biggs - is freed using a “Trojan furniture truck” . Although the use of firearms is frowned upon by the gentleman crooks, the breakout committee uses three machine guns, contrary to what has been agreed.

Prison sentences

The director made it especially exciting in the third and last part. After the actual story ends with the gang being sentenced, the end credits roll up - and then slide down again to address efforts to free some members. After that, too, the end credits go up again - and then go down again to finally tell the rest of the story about the boss Michael Donegan . Only then will the complete credits be shown.

Donegan was arrested on November 8, 1968 in a holiday resort on the south coast of England. Kinsey turned himself in to the police. The penalties of the convicted postal robbers were significantly reduced in appeal proceedings. After serving about a third of the original sentences, the mail robbers were released. Only a fraction of the booty was found.

Filming

Changed names were still used for the mail robbers and almost all scenes were shot in Germany; in the UK, on ​​the other hand, filming was mostly done with a hidden camera due to a lack of authorization.

The raid was on the route of the Solling Railway town Moringen near Göttingen rotated. The NDR hired by the Federal Railroad a whole train whose Behelfspackwagen superficially in the design of a Royal Mail - vehicle were designed. The diesel locomotive with the number V 200 050 used in the film was given the lettering " British Rail ". A German copy was found for the Bridego bridge, where the attack took place, as well as for the nearby Cheddington station.

A location : the railway bridge near Moringen

The film shows the - meanwhile demolished - station building of Moringen, the bridge shown still serves as an overpass over the field path to Vorwerk Holtensen. A villa in Großhansdorf near Hamburg served the NDR as a backdrop for the woodland farm.

“Filming delayed by rain” was the headline of the Moringer newspaper on July 24, 1965. But the frequent rainfall was not the only problem during the shooting. At the beginning, some cameramen were injured when a train crashed into a freight wagon and knocked over a tower with recording personnel. Also the director John Olden - husband of the actress Inge Meysel - died unexpectedly after about two thirds of the shooting. From one day to the next, Claus Peter Witt had to take over the direction.

documentation

On August 2, 2013 , the Franco-German cultural broadcaster Arte showed a documentary on the mail robbery and the television film entitled The Gentlemen asked for the cash register , consisting of original film material and new interviews, also with perpetrators who have since returned to freedom.

media

The DVDs do not contain any bonus material. The magnetic tapes from the television broadcast were used as a template for the DVDs, including the film errors recorded on them, for example in the third part with exactly the same audio error when two police officers talked after Michael Donegan was discovered, who was already heard on the television broadcast. The original reels of film were destroyed in the 1980s because at the time it was mistakenly believed that the video copy on a 1-inch VTR was sufficient. However, the 1-inch VTR material - on which the only film copy is located - is faulty due to material aging and was copied to Betacam SP in the early 1990s , which can be clearly seen on the DVD copy. The first edition of the DVD did not have to be restored, the current second edition retouched film tears, scratches and VTR errors, which, however, does not significantly improve the unsatisfactory old film scanning.

as a radio play

as street sweeper edition 50

  • The gentlemen ask to checkout / Hoopers last hunt , 4 DVD, Street Sweeper Edition 50, EAN: 4052912261105.

The DVDs contain all three parts in an unrestored version as well as both parts of Hooper's Last Hunt . The restored version of the feature film with the English title The Great British Train Robbery is included as bonus material , a film of the three parts that has been cut to the length of the feature film, the film roles of which have been retained. The quality of the restored frame is brilliant. An interview with the mail robber Ronald Biggs can also be seen.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ These figures were determined with the template: Inflation and the template: Exchange rate, are rounded to a full million and refer at most to the previous calendar year
  2. ↑ The gentlemen asked to pay . Arte.tv. Archived from the original on September 11, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 21, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv

literature

  • Drama about the mail robbery film. In: The star. No. 39 1965, pp. 171-172.
  • Filmed through the buttonhole. In: The star. No. 6 1966, pp. 3-5.
  • Stefan Vockrodt: The money came on the train. In: Lok Magazin. 11/2001, Verlag GeraNova, pp. 50-51
  • Michael Hehl: The gentlemen ask for cash. In: Railway courier. 5/1989, Eisenbahnkurier Verlag, pp. 30–33
  • The gentlemen asked to pay between Soest and Northeim. In: The Patriot. Lippstädter Zeitung, July 19, 2006.

Web links