Duel with Death (1949)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Duel with death |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 114 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Paul May |
| script | Paul May, GW Pabst |
| production | GW Pabst |
| music | no |
| camera | Helmuth Ashley |
| occupation | |
| |
Duel mit dem Tod is an Austrian film drama from 1949 by Paul May (director and screenplay) and GW Pabst (screenplay and production) with Rolf von Nauckhoff in the lead role, which thematizes the Austrian resistance in the Third Reich .
action
The film tells its story in numerous flashbacks. In the middle of the Second World War, the Viennese professor Dr. Ernst Romberg Physics. In his lectures, the lecturer makes no secret of the fact that he detests the National Socialist regime. One day he is promptly denounced, and Dr. Romberg was committed to military service in 1942. He learned his military drill in a barracks yard. When a comrade is sentenced to death for having exceeded his vacation for ten days and a jagged, regime-loyal Lieutenant Romberg verbally kills him in front of the assembled crew, the academic uses a low-flying attack to knock down his superior and get out of court. With the Gestapo on his back, Romberg flees aimlessly and ends up in an SS raid on a train station. In the SD service barracks, he can take a Hauptsturmführer uniform. Now his escape seems less dangerous.
The Catholic country pastor Menhardt takes Romberg in temporarily and can ensure that Maria Romberg, who has since been taken into kin custody, is released again. Thanks to forged stamps, the deserter Romberg becomes Standartenführer Immermann, who, as it says in his papers, is on the road "on special order" with a correspondingly respectful official seal ("Reichssicherungshauptamt - Abt. IV"). Romberg's uniform ensures that you stand at attention and don't bother him with annoying questions. To Dr. Romberg, his wife and pastor Menhardt formed a group of resistance fighters and Austrian patriots in the course of time. They free like-minded people and people at high risk from the Gestapo prisons, warn Jews against their evacuation and finally bring them to safety.
One day a tragic incident occurs, which is said to be fatal for Romberg after the war ended in 1945. He meets the Czechoslovak book printer Franz Lang, who secretly and underground produces leaflets at night. One day the man disappeared, and with him a non-commissioned officer who issued false military IDs at the military registration office. In the disguise of Oberführer Redwitz, Romberg picks up the arrested Lang from the SD control center in Innsbruck and frees him from a remand prison. Lang, provided with addresses, can continue his anti-Nazi activity. But obviously he made a fatal error. Because Dr. Romberg and his followers read an official announcement that "the printer Franz Lang in Linz was supposed to have been executed". Obviously Romberg and his people freed the wrong Lang, a master tailor who had been arrested as a black listener. Romberg's men did not know Lang, the printer.
Now that the freed Franz Lang is on the run, he is being pursued again by the Gestapo. Romberg suspects the danger and, willy-nilly, arrests the master tailor in his new mask as Sturmbannführer Busch. In a strict interrogation, Lang reveals all the names to the wrong SS man. Lang has become a dangerous confidante and thus endangers all future underground activities. When the real Gestapo ante portas finally stands, a shot is fired. Romberg explains to his people that Lang judged himself. After the war, a US military court sued Dr. Romberg for murder. The court hearing lets the confused and complex course of action pass in review in many flashbacks. Romberg sees himself in at least a moral guilt and pleads guilty, according to the indictment. He says: "My companions are wrong. Lang did not, as I told them at the time, commit suicide. It was the goal of my group to save human lives." Nevertheless, Dr. Romberg acquitted. One recognizes his resistance activities and also the extreme situation that he was exposed to as a leader. The killing of Lang is seen as an act of self-defense in order not to endanger the resistance, the fight against evil in the form of a criminal regime.
Production notes
Duel mit dem Tod was created in the spring of 1949 in the Rosenhügel studios in Vienna and was premiered on July 15, 1949 at the Locarno Film Festival . The Vienna premiere was on December 2, 1949, the German on July 28, 1950 in Berlin.
Producer GW Pabst also had the artistic direction. Georg M. Reuther took over the production management. Otto Pischinger designed the film structures.
The film, which was also awarded under the titles "On the Edge of Life" and "The Oath of Professor Romberg", received the title "artistically superior" from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
useful information
As Der Spiegel noted, the film is largely authentic. "It contains the experiences of friends of Paul May, and the Romberg fate is in many places Paul May's own biography".
Reviews
“In the" Duel with Death "everything remained real, from the SS epaulets to the American MP station, where the film begins with the complaint against Romberg. The spider web of the SD machinery is sharply drawn at all levels, from the small beer table spitz to the beating bull. The jargon is also appropriate, from the senseless snorting barracks courtyard trainer to the crucifix-smashing "old fighters". There are scenes that give you goose bumps. May knows from personal experience. He often had to do with the Gestapo. He too went underground from August 1944 until the end of the war. He had stocked up on official seals and papers at the OKW. "
“Its pace, its refined rhythm, its vibrating tension is (...) breathtaking. Hardly any of our post-war films have succeeded in doing this. And only a few of our post-war films had this gripping cinematic style. "
In the lexicon of international films it says: "Artistically and politically impressive drama."
“Vienna under the Nazis. Is Resistance Possible? A serious ethical question is: Is it allowed to kill someone who is in the resistance? Paul May and GW Pabst made this film in 1949, at a time when most people hardly ask questions about guilt or responsibility or even want to question their own role between 1938 and 1945. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Report in Der Spiegel, issue of July 7, 1949
- ↑ Duel with Death. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 1, 2020 .
- ^ Criticism on filmarchiv.at
Web links
- Essay by Christian Pape; in: Handbook of Antisemitism. Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Ed. v. Wolfgang Benz. Volume 7: Film, Theater, Literature and Art. Berlin / Munich / Boston 2015
- Duel with death in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Duel with death at filmportal.de