The dead from Beverly Hills

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Movie
Original title The dead from Beverly Hills
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1964
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Michael Pflegehar
script Peter Laregh
Hansjürgen Pohland
Michael Hausthar
production Hansjürgen Pohland for modern art film gmbh
music Heinz Kiessling
camera Ernst Wild
cut Margot von Schlieffen
occupation

and as a guest: Walter Giller

Die Tote von Beverly Hills is a German crime film with satirical undertones from 1963. It was based on a novel by Curt Goetz , who wrote this work during his emigration to California during the Second World War .

To a large extent, the film resembles a fun, experimental film happening, in which staged alienation ideas and sometimes illogical storylines became part of the director's concept. Some protagonists, whose meaning is not entirely clear, appear suddenly and just as unexpectedly disappear again. Absurd, scenic ideas serve far less to advance the murderer search than to caricature the American way of life à la Hollywood with its sparkling clean front gardens and the spacious swimming pools and at the same time to counteract the West German petty bourgeois reality of the late Adenauer years as an alternative.

action

A certain CG discovers a dead girl in a small wooded area in the Beverly Hills area . The corpse is bare, it is 17-year-old Lu Sostlov. Everything indicates that an innocent young girl with a pure past was murdered here. The detective Ben starts the investigation. Soon, however, the first results of the investigation give a completely different picture of the dead woman in Beverly Hills. Her diary reveals that Lu was by no means the innocence of the country, but rather that she led an extremely varied love life. There are also increasing indications that she was not even 17, but only 14 years old. In flashbacks, the "wicked" love life of the dead is reconstructed and rolled out.

The list of Lu's lovers listed in the diary is long. In her younger years, the prominent girl had an affair with a wealthy painter, Dr. Steininger, then with Peter de Lorm, a very young, aspiring screenwriter from Germany, and the well-known Wagner- Tenor Swendka. And what about this ominous C. G., a Swiss writer who “quite by accident” discovered the dead woman? He is also mentioned in the diary. Not to forget Lu's horned husband, an exiled Czech archaeologist who emigrated to the USA . Much of the traces that Lu's nymphomania has left on her lovers lead nowhere. But then a very hot lead leads Ben to Las Vegas to the dancing Tiddy Sisters, who perform there every evening in entertainment shows. It turns out that they were rivals of the dead and have them on their conscience.

production

The film was shot in October / November 1963 on several streets and highways in Beverly Hills, in a desert near Palm Springs and in Las Vegas . Pohland had a letter of recommendation with him from Willy Brandt , Berlin's mayor at the time.

The film had its world premiere on April 9, 1964 in Munich and was shown a few weeks later as a German competition entry at the Cannes International Film Festival

The Dead of Beverly Hills was the feature film debut of television entertainment shows director Michael Pflegehar .

With the total cost of around DM 1.2 million  , the budget for a cinema project to be realized in a high-priced foreign country was very tight. For 100,000 DM, producer Hansjürgen Pohland bought the film rights from Goetz's widow Valerie von Martens .

On Pohland's instructions, the shooting on site was mostly done secretly and without licenses in order to save the expensive shooting permits. As the Beverly Hills Times wrote, Pohland and his crew "snuck into Hollywood's backyard without any permission." Pohland also did this because the mandatory employment of unionized film workers in the USA would have driven up sharply calculated production costs enormously.

criticism

“With fashionable alienations and ambitious style exercises interspersed with the film of the novel of the same name by Curt Goetz, which pokes at the clichés of the American crime novel. The decadent high society milieu is savored with relish rather than caricatured, the socially critical swipes remain a gimmick without consequences. "

"Ravishingly playful, elegant, erotic, with original visual ideas juggling satire on the high society [sic!] And crime novels by TV director Michael Pflegehar (" Bel ami 2000 "), who guerrilla scenes set in Hollywood and Arizona filmed because he had no official filming permits. "

Kay Wenigers The large personal dictionary of the film reminded us that, as a rule, Pflegehar's "Curt Goetz film adaptation" Die Tote von Beverly Hills "[...] was received with mild benevolence".

On the occasion of the DVD release of a newly scanned and restored version in the Tagesspiegel, Thomas Groh wrote : “Basically Die Tote von Beverly Hills is based on the formula: Papa's cinema minus puffy pastries plus New German Film minus senior seminar. (...) Between these poles of the FRG cinema, the film seems like a wandering solitaire, enjoying playing with cinematic forms and tones. Sometimes it is reminiscent of an exuberant Eastern European comedy, then again of the Nouvelle Vague, and finally of the casual pop art comedy of that time. (...) The fact that one of the most beautiful German color films of the 1960s was shot in black and white over long stretches is part of the program of constantly undermining expectations. "

literature

  • In Hollywood's backyard . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1964, pp. 74 ( online report from the shooting).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. In Hollywood's backyard . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1964, pp. 74 ( online ).
  2. The Dead of Beverly Hills. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 24, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. The Dead of Beverly Hills (1964). In: kino.de . Retrieved February 24, 2016 .
  4. Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 6: N - R. Mary Nolan - Meg Ryan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 216.
  5. Thomas Groh: A film that broke all conventions. In: Der Tagesspiegel. October 11, 2019, accessed October 16, 2019 .