Now and in the hour of my death

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Movie
Original title Now and in the hour of my death
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1963
length 98 minutes
Rod
Director Konrad Petzold
script Egon Günther
Dieter Scharfenberg (dramaturgy)
production DEFA , KAG "concrete"
music Günter Hauk
camera Siegfried Hönicke
cut Lotti Mehnert
occupation

Now and in the hour of my death is a German DEFA feature film by Konrad Petzold from 1963 based on the novel The Black Limousine by Egon Günther .

action

Ella Conradi is a German journalist for the magazine Weltbild and is in Jerusalem to report on the Eichmann trial taking place there . Because of the atrocities uncovered in court, she is completely at the end of her nerves and asks her editor-in-chief Frank Müller to be replaced. He agrees and calls you back. Before departure, she meets with the young Israeli journalist Mosche in a bar to say goodbye to him.

A young man walks through the streets of a West German city and picks up his girlfriend. They go to buy swimwear and then go swimming. The whole time they are followed by a black limousine with two men in it. One of them makes a very nervous impression and keeps saying: "I can't, I can't". Arrived at the river, Georg Kirchner, that's the name of the young man, went to the rocky bank when suddenly he was shot at. He can only jump into the water and does not come back up.

Adrian Haupt, who quickly became authorized signatory of a large margarine company after the Second World War , is on his way home. He walks through the streets frightened and is only calmed down when he is in his apartment. When his phone rings, he picks up the receiver and confirms that he is home. After finishing the conversation, he tries to get a flight with all major airlines, no matter where. Since a flight is only possible the next morning, he goes to a bar. The next morning, after the night is over, he wants to go home to pick up a few more things before departure. Mr. Haupt is shot from a car on the street.

Ella Conradi reports back to her editor-in-chief and expects to be dismissed because she can no longer carry out her assignment in Jerusalem. But two murders have now taken place in the city and Frank Müller needs the capable court reporter to report on them. Immediately she starts her new task and learns at the Forensic Institute that both murders were carried out with the same weapon. The next day the alleged perpetrator is caught and the murder weapon is found in his garden.

Later at the court hearing, Ralf Jordan is confronted with the fact that he, as the perpetrator, must have a bruised wound from a rifle on his hand, which he also has. The 20,000 DM hidden under the parquet floor in his house are also interpreted as payment for a contract murder. Only Ella Conradi believes his assurance that he is innocent and looks for evidence. So she meets Beate, the friend of the young man who was shot at by the river, and convinces her that Georg Kirchner, who is still alive, reports as a witness. On the witness stand, he stated that the man who shot him looked completely different from the defendant. After the trial, Ella wants to look for more evidence in Jordan's house and is surprised by the investigative commissioner Hendrik. During a subsequent conversation, he advises her to refrain from further unauthorized inquiries, since he has found out that there is more to the case than she suspects. The next day, Georg Kirchner gave a tape interview on the matter in the editorial offices of “Weltbild”. His gaze falls on several photographs lying around on the table and recognizes one of the man who shot him. It's Adrian Haupt, the man who was also shot. The interview will appear in the next issue of the newspaper.

Ella Conradi's car is smashed. At night a truck comes up, drives close to the sports car and several men throw some heavy objects at it. Then the journalist's phone rings and a voice warns her to continue investigating the Jordan case. A day later, a car stops next to her, she is thrown into it and the limousine drives into a remote area. Here Ella has to leave the car again and she is now beaten up by two men. When she gets hold of one of her high-heeled shoes, she hits one of the attackers in the face with her heel, making him scream out loud.

Commissioner Hendrik is released from further processing of the case. Police President Gamme, a former high-ranking Nazi, instructs Commissioner Haberland with this task. Ms. Conradi doesn't let herself get down. To find out more about this, she visits the very young wife of the murdered Adrian Haupt. In doing so, she learns that he was a middle-class officer in the SS in the Third Reich and therefore sat in front of the television every day to follow the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. He lived in constant fear that his name would fall. On the way home, Ella notices a man with an eye patch. She follows him to his hotel and manages to overhear his phone calls in the headquarters. Then she goes to Inspector Hendrik's home and together they try to research the phone numbers called. Then Ella goes to the editorial office of her newspaper, but there her editor-in-chief Müller can be denied. When she finally manages to speak to him, he explains to her what problems he has already gotten because of the revelations in Weltbild , because behind the accused Jordan are influential crooks, probably up to the government.

On the last day of the trial, Ella Conradi drives to the court and, after Jordan's acquittal, she and his defense lawyer Dr. Welk was invited to a glass of champagne, as she played a large part in the verdict. She asks the lawyer if he really doesn't know who shot Adrian Haupt. She explains to him that it was Jordan who urgently needed 20,000 DM to finance his high standard of living. Since it was clear to various former superiors of Haupt that he would talk about his past when his name is mentioned in Jerusalem, he had to leave and in Jordan they found a willing executor. The shots at the unknown Georg Kirchner only served as a distraction. Ella goes home to write the court report and Jordan continues to get drunk. Then Mrs. Conradi's doorbell rings, she opens the door, it's drunk Jordan. She sits down at the typewriter again and continues writing. After he confirmed to her once more that her findings were true, he shot her with a pistol.

After his service in the Presidium, Commissioner Hendrik wants to visit Ms. Conradi again with his assistant. After loud music can be heard in the apartment, but Ella does not open it, he breaks open the apartment door. Here he finds her dead in front of her typewriter. The escaped Jordan is quickly exposed as the perpetrator, because Ella wrote down the whole exchange with him on the machine. The commissioner decides to interfere again in the case.

production

Now and in the hour of my death , the artistic working group shot “concrete” as a black and white film in total vision and had its premiere on October 31, 1963 in the Colosseum cinema in Berlin . It was first broadcast on German television on August 13, 1965.

criticism

According to Helmut Ullrich in the Neue Zeit , the film was only looking for cheap effects that distract from the message of the film instead of leading to it. The criminal act has become independent, so that it has become an end in itself and thus an important political issue is flattened.

Heinz Hoffmann found in New Germany that the author and the director did not understand how to create a story true to the milieu and character from the richness of the facts and the abundance of factual material.

The lexicon of international film states that after an exciting start, the film increasingly slips into the colportage and gives the material away to a superficial suspense dramaturgy that is hardly managed in terms of staging.

literature

  • Now and in the hour of my death In: F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 288 to 289.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neue Zeit of November 8, 1963; P. 4
  2. ↑ Neues Deutschland from November 5, 1963; P. 6
  3. ↑ Now and at the hour of my death. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used