Police call 110: death by fire

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Episode of the series Polizeiruf 110
Original title Death by fire
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 MR
length 85 minutes
classification Episode 191 ( List )
First broadcast July 20, 1997 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Heinz Schirk
script Heinz Schirk
production Berndt Rhotert
music Axel Donner
camera Werner Hoffmann
cut Stefan Blau
Elke Herbener
occupation

Feuertod is a German crime film directed by Heinz Schirk in 1997. The television film was released as the 191st episode of the Polizeiruf 110 film series .

action

Two African street musicians are attacked by skinheads in a subway station ; one is pushed onto the tracks and seriously injured. The Moroccan Claude Barré manages to escape. Chief Inspector Robert Loster and his colleague Lubig are entrusted with the investigation. Loster has only recently lived in Offenbach and previously worked in Kassel . His wife Nina, who is currently writing her diploma thesis in psychology and also looks after their son, repeatedly draws his attention to the family's financial worries. Loster not earned enough so that the family now 42,000 German marks in debt. Now the unpaid family car is stolen and later found destroyed. Loster learns that his wife had secretly taken out insurance to save money.

When Claude Barré is questioned, Loster meets the bakery owner Heini Troll, who turns out to be a childhood friend. He also learns that a short time ago there was a fire in a German-Turkish pub not far from the bakery and that the perpetrators probably acted out of xenophobic motives. Heini has also been threatened because he lets Claude Barré live with him to sublet.

Loster asks Heini for money, but he himself is facing bankruptcy: A year ago the bakery hit the headlines when it sold ice cream contaminated with salmonella and a child was killed. Although they got the ice cream from a café in town, so Heini is not to blame, the bakery has been avoided since then. Around 800,000 marks in debt have accumulated. Loster jokingly suggests to Heini to set fire to his bakery in order to collect the sum insured of 1.2 million marks. So he could start a new life for himself and his wife, who is expecting a child. Loster could also use his share to pay off his debts. At Heini's birthday party shortly afterwards, Loster Heini made it clear that he meant his proposal seriously. He explains his plan to him; Loster's employee Sasse overhears the conversation. After a period of reflection, Heini agrees to the plan.

Heini and his wife Gudrun travel to Mallorca for 14 days , while Gudrun's mother, who lives with the family, drives her dog to the cure. Loster wants to set fire to the house in his absence and glued the hydrant lid on the street. In addition, he sets up a fake fire letter in which Heini and his family are racially insulted, so that the act can be interpreted as an attack by neo-Nazis. Shortly before the act, Heini called Loster and got out of the plan because he couldn't get through anything on his nerves. Loster accepts this; on the same night the building went up in flames. Nobody knows that Gudrun's mother returned prematurely from the cure; it burns in the house. Heini believes that Loster carried out his plan against the agreement. Loster cannot convince him otherwise, but begins the investigation.

First, Lubig and Loster arrest the ex-Nazi Axel, who betrays two other men who are said to have thrown the incendiary device at the pub. Both men were with Sasse again during the bakery fire. He begins to blackmail Loster and Heini and makes it clear to Gudrun that they both started the fire. Gudrun suffers a premature birth. Loster is soon able to pinpoint the real culprit: it is Jakob Tiess, the brother of the girl who died of salmonella. He wanted to get revenge on Heini, but thought that nobody was home. Meanwhile, in the hospital, Gudrun learns that her child has died. She reports Heini and Loster to Lubig as arsonists. Heini and Loster are at home with Loster and are relieved that the perpetrator has been caught. Sasse appears to threaten both of them. He has a weapon with him that he loses in a duel with Loster. Heini picks it up and accidentally shoots Nina, Loster's wife. When Sasse leaves in shock, Lubig appears and finds Loster, Heini and the dead Nina.

production

Fire death was filmed in Offenbach, among other places. The costumes for the film were created by Hedi Karpenstein , the film structures were created by Jörg Domenik . The film had its television premiere on July 20, 1997 on the first . The audience participation was 21 percent.

It was the 191st episode of the film series Polizeiruf 110 and the first contribution of Hessischer Rundfunk to the series. Robert Loster and Lubig were investigating their only case. The case was "more of an embarrassing solution" because the ARD needed a Sunday crime thriller. Even before it was broadcast, it was known that no further crime thriller would be shot with Lubig and Loster, as the first crime thriller about the actual HR police call team Grosche, Reeding and Schlosser had already been shot.

criticism

"Despite well-known actors like Jürgen Tarrach, the viewer gets the impression of having got into the performance of an amateur play troupe", wrote the TV Spielfilm and called Feuertod a "confused crime thriller with a lot of false statements". Rainer Tittelbach stated that the case was "extremely unsuitable as an introduction to a crime series" and, as a stopgap measure, "does not serve the image of the series". It is "a hermetic chamber play, without a milieu, but with numerous dramatic twists."

In Feuertod, director Heinz Schirk relied “on the concatenation of coincidences and unfortunate circumstances, which was not entirely beneficial to his case,” wrote the Frankfurter Neue Presse . Schirk had "set a Greek tragedy in his head, and for this the plot had to be adjusted accordingly," wrote the Stuttgarter Zeitung , which, however, praised the performance. “What we saw: a spectacle of need, a tangle of constructed sadness. All of this should perhaps be bundled into a metaphor for life, but it was far too shrill, tearful and demanding for that, ”says the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

literature

  • Peter Hoff: Police call 110. Films, facts, cases . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001, pp. 219, 221.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Hoff: Police call 110. Films, facts, cases . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001, p. 200.
  2. ↑ a b Rainer Tittelbach: Hermetisches Kammerspiel . In: Sächsische Zeitung , July 19, 1997, p. 20.
  3. ^ Polizeiruf 110: Feuertod on tvspielfilm.de
  4. ^ Jutta W. Thomasius: TV criticism . In: Frankfurter Neue Presse , July 21, 1997, p. 2.
  5. ↑ jeb: Viewed critically - Police call 110: death by fire . In: Stuttgarter Zeitung , July 22, 1997, p. 25.
  6. ↑ Hans-Heinrich Obuch: Spectacle of need . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 22, 1997, p. 13.
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