Poison in the zoo

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Movie
Original title Poison in the zoo
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1952
length 83 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Hans Müller
script Edgar Kahn
production Camera Filmproduktion GmbH, Hamburg
( Joachim Matthes )
music Marc Hendriks
camera Ekkehard Kyrath
cut Anneliese Schönnenbeck
occupation

Poison in the Zoo is a German crime film made at the end of 1951 with Carl Raddatz , Irene von Meyendorff and Ernst Schröder in the leading roles. The shooting began under the direction of Wolfgang Staudte , who until then had worked almost exclusively for the communist-controlled DEFA , but who soon got caught up in “big politics” and the West-East conflict and was then replaced by Hans Müller .

action

There is fear in Hagenbeck's zoo in Hamburg . A number of animals have mysteriously died; the last time it hit a zebra . The employees don't know what to do, the deaths cannot be explained medically. Zoo director Dr. Rettberg asked his old friend, Detective Glasbrenner, to come and ask him for help. When the rhinoceros Jonathan, the zoo's showpiece, also shows an abscess, Rettberg personally goes into the enclosure to take a smear. He is temporarily put out of action by the powerful animal. Glasbrenner is unofficially investigating the matter. The tamer Vera Pauly, who has only been at the zoo for seven weeks and actually works in the circus, is also initially suspected. Also suspicious is the zoo manager Heinz Beck, who temporarily ran the zoo for a year before Rettberg's arrival. Beck has a dark past, as he was accused in Katowice before the war of having made forbidden vivisections and experiments with chemical preparations. There was an acquittal at the time for lack of evidence.

It soon becomes clear that Beck could not get over the fact that after only one year he was given Dr. Rettberg put in front of his nose. Beck's work in a managerial position is no longer needed and, as before, he has to be content with auxiliary work and follow the instructions of the new zoo director. Due to Beck's inattention, a cobra breaks out and bites a mother goat. At the last moment, Rettberg was able to save the goat with a syringe. Instead, her cub, the billy goat, is dead the following morning. The investigations show that the various animals recently died of sodium fluoride . Thus, the deaths are clearly poison attacks. That same morning, Vera finds a young lion dead. The chimpanzee also looks very lethargic.

Police officer Glasbrenner suspects that the only person behind the attacks can be someone who disavows Rettberg and wants to prove that he is not qualified to run a zoo. Meanwhile, an elephant that is very badly off is the next victim of the poison splash. He also received an injection of sodium fluoride. It turns out that Beck was actually behind the attacks. He seeks a confrontation with Rettberg and accuses him of not having the "shop" under control. Beck demands that the criminal investigation department, which was not officially involved despite regular visits from Kriminalrat Glasbrenner, is finally involved. During the examinations in the zoo, a poison bottle is found in Vera Pauly's trailer that Beck had just left there in order to suspect it. With a trick, however, Glasbrenner can finally expose Beck as the culprit. Shortly after setting a fire in Vera Pauly's trailer, he escapes outside, pursued by the police in the dark of night. Beck hides in the polar bear enclosure , where he has hidden his supplies of sodium fluoride. He dies if he falls off a rock. In the end, Kriminalrat Glasbrenner acts as a marriage trainer towards Vera and Rettberg.

Production notes

The shooting took place from mid-October to mid-November 1951 under the working title Gift in the Atelier Hamburg-Wandsbek and in the Hamburg zoo Hagenbeck . Dietrich von Theobald and Werner Ludwig were the production managers , Heinz Pehlke worked as a simple cameraman under chief cameraman Ekkehard Kyrath . Herbert Kirchhoff and Albrecht Becker were responsible for the film construction. Hans Ebel took care of the sound. Zoo owner Carl-Heinz Hagenbeck and Hagenbeck manager Kurt Wegener were hired as advisors in all zoological questions. During the first week, director Wolfgang Staudte shot the outdoor shots at Hagenbeck. After a dispute with the Federal Ministry of the Interior , he resigned.

The premiere fell on January 24, 1952 in the Lichtburg in Essen . The first German television broadcast took place on July 10, 1959 on ARD .

useful information

The story was inspired by events that rocked Frankfurt Zoo in 1948/49 : there were several mysterious animal killings during this time. Then in 1949 Matthes began to develop a corresponding film material. In the first version, the zoo director himself should be exposed as a (schizophrenic) perpetrator. At the end of the film, the Bonn guarantee committee was unwilling to accept a default guarantee for the manuscript submitted in April 1951. Then screenwriter Edgar Kahn had to develop an alternative ending. This version received the necessary financial security from the federal government.

The director Staudte, planned by producer Matthes, was supposed to start shooting in Hamburg at the beginning of October 1951. He had already caused a sensation in the same year with the DEFA film The Subject . Staudte, who disagreed with Kahn's script, fell into the firing line of Bonn politics shortly afterwards. It was rumored that on May 1, 1951, he had given an eulogy for Stalin in East Berlin . It turned out, however, that this was a deliberate false report, scattered by interested parties in order to prevent the DEFA star director. Staudte was able to prove that at this point in time he had been somewhere else, namely as a guest at a film meeting organized by the French High Commission in the Hotel Herbrecht in Bacharach.

Nevertheless, Bonn took a stand and demanded from Staudte, if the film wanted to get a deficiency guarantee, that the director, who was hired for poison in the zoo , should first publish a “clear anti-communist article” and, second, make a statement to the Bonn Ministry of the Interior that he was in In the future, he would no longer work at DEFA, and thirdly, he would “direct an anti-communist film as soon as possible”. When Staudte brusquely rejected this request and returned to East Berlin, Matthes engaged the largely unknown director Müller. He finished the film, with initial support from Staudte. Müller was given sole names in the opening credits.

Awards

The FBL awarded the film the title valuable .

Reviews

Film critic Hans Helmut Prinzler said: “The atmosphere in the Tiergarten is lovingly observed and also has funny moments, the finale is effectively staged, the black and white photos by Ekkehard Kyrath have their own qualities. Even if the spectator recognizes the perpetrator early on, there are many surprises in the 80 minutes. "

In the lexicon of the international film it says: "An honest, but well-built and acted crime film that dispenses with gimmicky sensations."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946-1955 , pp. 258 f.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Staudte - actor, director . In: CineGraph - Lexicon for German-Language Film , Lg. 20, F 11 f.
  3. ↑ His share of the shooting was around a week.
  4. ↑ Poison in the Zoo on hhprinzler.de
  5. ^ Poison in the zoo. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 3, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 

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