The trail leads to Berlin
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The trail leads to Berlin |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1952 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Franz Cap |
| script |
Paul Hans Rameau based on an idea by Artur Brauner |
| production | Artur Brauner for CCC (Berlin) |
| music | Herbert Trantow |
| camera | Helmuth Ashley |
| cut | Johanna Meisel |
| occupation | |
| |
The Trail leads to Berlin is a German crime film from 1952 by Franz Cap .
action
Berlin at the beginning of the 1950s. Two men take the elevator up to the Berlin radio tower . There it comes to a violent argument between the two. One man, reluctantly, tells the other not to joke and to come with him. “You have notified us,” he says ambiguously. When the other refuses, the first pulls out a revolver. There was a scuffle, then a shot was fired, which was drowned out by an airplane flying over the top of the radio tower. The shooter flees back downstairs with the elevator. Meanwhile, on the floor with the restaurant below, a young, elegant woman is waiting, having a coffee and reading the 'Stern' . The man who was shot also carried the 'star' with him, obviously a distinguishing mark. After the shooter, whom the woman with the 'star' sees in the elevator for a few seconds, has disappeared, she rushes up to the viewing platform and sees the fatally struck man die. Blood is trickling from his chest. Another man with his wife and two young children have also arrived on the platform. The dying person only mentions the beginning of the name Dorn twice to the father of the family ... before he dies. When the elevator operator is informed of the murder, those present look into the depths, where the murderer rushes across the street and races off in a black limousine waiting for him.
The police start a large manhunt and Berlin's bobbins attach themselves in their VW beetles to the limousine driven by crook Martin. When trying to catch the gangsters, Martin rushes through the police barrier and escapes through the Brandenburg Gate to the east of the city. The two detectives Wengen and Lüdecke are currently dealing with US dollar bills, which are flooding the west of Berlin in large numbers, when Lüdecke mentions the murder on the radio tower. Apparently both cases have something to do with one another. Meanwhile, an American flies into Tempelhof. It is the lawyer Ronald Roberts who is looking for a Karl Dornbrink. Since he cannot find him, he first seeks out his daughter Vera Dornbrink, who works as a ballet teacher. She is the woman who was waiting for the later murdered man in the radio tower restaurant at the beginning of the film. Roberts explains to Vera that her father inherited a farm in Ohio and inherited $ 150,000 from his stepbrother. Vera explains to Roberts that her father is no longer alive and that he died in a labor camp in Austria shortly before the end of the war. Roberts quickly takes a liking to Vera and tries to get to know her better. Both go out with each other. Little does Roberts suspect that Vera knows a lot more than she says she knows. In fact, her father, once a sought-after artist, is still alive.
Gregor Pratt, head of a counterfeiting ring, has been putting Vera under pressure to cooperate with him for some time. Pratt holds Vera's 65-year-old father prisoner and forces the graphic designer to help produce the false dollar bills. Browski also belongs to the gang. He is the man who shot the dropout Groß, who also belongs to the gang, on the radio tower. Roberts realizes quickly that Vera has not told him the whole truth and confronts her with his findings. Things will soon come to a head. One trail leads Roberts to the Humboldthafen , where the American is attacked by Martin and Browski and finally knocked down. Finally he ends up in the water, wakes up in a convalescent home, which is obviously in the east of Berlin, and is interviewed by a Soviet interpreter named Tamara on behalf of her superior, the Soviet major Sirotkin. The Berlin police have now established that the dollar bills that have appeared in abundance are forgeries. As a result, the American occupying power of Berlin began to prick up his ears, and Detective Wengen got in touch with his US colleague Harris, the chief detective. The British through the detective chief Lonergan also intervene.
Gradually the ring around the gang of criminals is tightening, the police and the members of the counterfeiting ring are engaged in rapid chases all over the west of Berlin. Roberts and Vera are now caught between the lines, and Pratt, who hypocritically asserts his love for Vera, has made her his prisoner. The gangsters have built their workshop at the interface between the western and eastern sectors under the ruined Reichstag building, where they are least suspected. Roberts, injured in the head, appears to free Pratt and Vera's father Karl Dornbrink from the hands of the villains. Gang leader Pratt pulls Vera away, followed by Roberts. In the meantime, the Berlin police storm the hiding place to dig it up. This ultimately leads to a fight with the gangsters.
Production notes
The film, which draws its charm mainly from the documentary recordings of early post-war Berlin, which was still marked by the massive war scars, was shot from July 28, 1952. Filming ended in October of the same year. The indoor shots were taken in the CCC studios in Berlin-Spandau , the outdoor shots at various West Berlin locations such as the radio tower, the Bahnhof Zoo , in front of the Brandenburg Gate , at the Reichstag , the Charlottenburger Chaussee, the ruins of the Kroll Opera House , the Kantstraße, on Bismarck monument, on Kurfürstendamm and numerous other streets and squares in Berlin.
The premiere was on November 28, 1952 in several German cities. The film opened in Austria on September 4, 1953.
Producer Artur Brauner, who originally envisaged the dancer Sybil Werden ( The Last Recipe , 1951) for the female lead, hired two previously completely unknown actors for the male and female lead. The American Gordon Howard had recently played a supporting role in Des Teufels Erbe , Irina Garden made her film debut in The Trace Leads to Berlin . For the native Czech František Čáp, this was the most famous of several films he made as Franz Cap in early post-war Germany in the 1950s. He then returned to Czechoslovakia.
Fritz Klotzsch was production manager, the buildings were designed by Emil Hasler and Walter Kutz . Arthur Grimm created the still photos.
After 7 minutes and 33 seconds of playing time, Horst Buchholz has a short, silent appearance as a young man in the radio tower entrance, who listens with interest to the discoverer of the corpse on the radio tower viewing platform. A few minutes later, the young Günter Pfitzmann, as an officer in the police control center, has only an insignificantly longer speaking role. The later screenwriter Heinz Oskar Wuttig made his film debut here. It was his only role as a film actor.
An English-language version was produced for the international market under the title Adventure in Berlin . In the preselection for the German entry for the Cannes Film Festival (1953), The Trace Leads to Berlin fell through, as it was found that this film was thematically too close to Carol Reed's classic The Third Man .
Reviews
“Vienna has twice been the subject of good films that have captured the peculiar political flair of the Austrian four-power city. Now CCC-Film has dared to venture into the much more exciting Berlin. 'The Trace Leads To Berlin' is a film made in English and German, which of course owes a lot to the topic of Berlin, even in the material that is actually not political, but a very American-tinged gangster story, on the fringes of which only the political lanterns light up. The world-famous scaffolding of the Third Man also peeks out everywhere. It begins with a murder on the radio tower and ends with a hunt for criminals in the catacombs and ruins of the Reichstag building. (...) In any case, a Carol Reed did not make this film from Berlin, which always attaches importance to the year 1952. That Berlin Chikago wants to overtake the rank does not want to advertise the trace leading to Berlin - in which, in addition to Kurt Meisel's new gangster physiognomy, the strict beauty Irina Gardens appears. "
Paimann's film lists summed up:
"Criminal story against a time-related background, which is initially made clear by typical Berlin exterior shots, later covered by sensational content, just as individual actors remain too superficial."
"Template-like political thriller that only gains a little bit of timbre and interest through the exterior shots in the ruins of Berlin."
Web links
- The trail leads to Berlin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The trail leads to Berlin at filmportal.de
- The trail leads to Berlin in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ^ In Rainer Rothers Enemy Brothers. The Cold War and the German film say: "Different in" The track leads to Berlin ": Here the Tiergarten looks quite like a backdrop, it fits so well as an environment for this chase and when viewed from the Victory Column it makes a great effect. At the end the showdown takes place in the Reichstag, the ruins of which in turn look like a film location, with the graffiti on the walls, the piles of rubble inside and the bullet holes on the roof. " ; in The track leads to Berlin on userpage.fu-berlin.de
- ↑ Finally a new face. In: Der Spiegel. 23/1952.
- ↑ Cannes: Cried when I woke up. In: Der Spiegel 4/1953.
- ↑ The trail leads to Berlin. ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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. In: Paimann's film lists
- ↑ The trail leads to Berlin. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
