Sinful limit

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Movie
Original title Sinful limit
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1951
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Robert A. Stemmle
script Robert A. Stemmle based
on an idea by Artur Brauner
production Artur Brauner for CCC (Berlin)
music Herbert Trantow
camera Igor Oberberg
cut Walter Wischniewsky
occupation

Sinful Frontier is a German crime film from 1951 by Robert A. Stemmle . Dieter Borsche and Inge Egger play the main roles .

action

The Rabatzer with their smuggling activities - particularly profitable smuggled goods are black coffee, which was highly taxed in early post-war Germany - made plenty of headlines in the German-Belgian-Dutch border triangle. These are mostly socially neglected young people between 13 and 16 years of age. This group also includes 16-year-old Marianne Mertens, whose father is currently serving three months in prison for smuggling, and her 13-year-old brother Heinz. Once again an action is to be carried out in which around a hundred young people take part. The customs officers, who guard the border as well as they can, can catch up to ten children every time they cross the border illegally, and so the cost-benefit calculation of the leader Krapp usually pays off. This time Jan Krapp entrusted Marianne with her own "raiding party", and she actually manages to get to her contact, the black marketeer Mielke, in an abandoned factory area and carry out the deal - this time it is drugs - to the satisfaction of her client. Meanwhile, the police picked up nine children that night who were being interrogated by Customs Inspector Dietrich. This time little Heinz was also hit. During the interrogation everyone lies that the bars are bending and also gives false names.

A young man has arrived on site who wants to write his doctoral thesis on the problem of child gang smuggling. The committed student is called Hans Fischer and will soon turn out to be the epitome of an understanding pastor. He is developing more and more from an uninvolved observer to a sensitive helper in this youthful drama. The good-natured teacher Miss Jansen, in whose class numerous children are constantly missing when they are on a smuggling tour, has long since given up. It is becoming evident that many of the Rabatzer children are being encouraged to smuggle across borders by their useless parents. Suddenly Marianne shows up in class to report her brother Heinz as "sick". Fischer smells the roast and then pays the Mertens family a visit. Marianne welcomes him there with the utmost suspicion. Krapp uses the weekend dance fun to make new contacts for more rewarding smuggling activities. At the next lucrative campaign, Krapp, who was very satisfied with Marianne's last campaign, again assigned the girl to lead a group of rabbits. Fischer suspects something and hangs up on it. In the Rabatzer meeting point, the old factory, he meets Marianne, while Krapp has left in good time. Fischer tries to talk Marianne out of her actions, for whom he feels something.

Father Mertens was released early from prison as cleansed and from now on forbids his two underage children to “rabble”. He furiously beats his rebellious daughter. But Marianne has long since become independent and can no longer say anything about her old man. Together with Heinz she escapes and wants to fulfill the job given to her by Krapp. But this time the customs police have been warned. She uses sniffer dogs to hunt minors in the track area. One of them breaks free and chases the startled children into a tunnel. When an express train approaches them at full speed, a child stumbles in a panic and is almost hit by the train. Only the courageous intervention of a customs officer saves his life, while he loses his own through his daring efforts. The children returning home spread rumors in the village that they wanted to be driven to their deaths. The mood is boiling, the village community rioted in front of the customs office. A car with the dead customs officer is pulled up and everyone begins to be silent.

Marianne continues to see her future as the "right hand man" of the gang leader, whom she admires, Krapp. He has a “really big thing” in store for her: he wants to smuggle particularly valuable goods below the border through a tunnel that the Rabatz children dug beforehand. Before that, Marianne is supposed to break into the customs office and scout out the service book to see when exactly the service changes take place. She does, but can no longer lock the service book case with the duplicate key, which is noticeable later. The changing of the guard is then changed. Marianne and Krapp fall into the trap of the customs officers. While Krapp is wounded in an exchange of fire, Marianne is able to escape through the underground passage. She states that the valuable smuggled goods are precious church treasures that have apparently been stolen recently. When she arrived on the Belgian side of the border, she hit a pistol bullet from a border guard there. Lying unconscious on the side of the road, she finds her contact with stolen goods and takes her with her. He later claims that he did not find any of the stolen goods on her. In Belgium she is treated like a mindless piece of meat. At home in Germany, Marianne's parents are very worried. Her father already wants to call in the police when the girl returns. Marianne is very upset. And she is silent. But at least she begins to rethink her previous life, and Hans Fischer also believes that she could manage to break out of this criminal existence.

Meanwhile, Krapp was subjected to severe interrogation. He is told on the head that he stole the church treasure. But Krapp is freezing, he denies everything. During a transport he can escape his guards at a favorable moment. Krapp's Rabatzer lover Cilly, a stupid and easy-going and compliant girl, helps him on the run. Marianne, who wants to clean the table with Inspector Dietrich with a confession, is intercepted by Krapp beforehand. She should help him escape. Marianne's fiercest competitor, Cilly, has now become the new squad leader and instructs her Rabatz children, who are costumed for the carnival, to hide stolen silver cutlery under their costumes and thus cross the border. But this time the customs officers have been warned and can arrest the troop. Krapp flees again, but is soon caught. There is an exchange of fire with the police, in which Krapp is killed. Cilly breaks down crying. This end is a healing shock for the Rabatz children.

Production notes

The film, which is strongly influenced by the cinematic, Italian neorealism of Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti of the late 1940s, was shot from July 19 to September 11, 1951. External locations were Aachen and the surrounding area, Berlin and the Harz region . The studio recordings were made in Berlin-Spandau . After the FSK exam on October 24, 1951, which approved the film for young people aged 16 and over, Sinful Border was shown on November 8, 1951 in the Bavaria Cinema in Aachen.

Heinz Fiebig was production manager, the buildings were designed by Mathias Matthies and Ellen Schmidt . Arthur Grimm created the still photos.

A plethora of subsequently famous actors made their debut in this film. Horst Buchholz appears as a young smuggler in a matter of seconds. The minors Cornelia Froboess and Wolfgang Jansen also appeared in front of the camera for the first time in Sinful Border . Gerd Vespermann , who plays Peter Mosbacher's assistant here , also has two short scenes for the first time. For Jan Hendriks , the second male leading actor, this film not only held the first speaking role, but also marked his breakthrough as a film actor.

The happy ending, chosen as a concession over better marketing, did not match the original script. The head organove Krapp, called "Kaminski" or "Kowalki" in the original manuscript, was to be arrested, but got away with her life, while Marianne was to suffer a cathartic death at the moment of realizing her previously incorrect actions.

Awards

  • Silver box to Jan Hendriks as the best young actor
  • Predicate valuable
  • Robert A. Stemmle was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1952

Reviews

“Robert Adolf Stemmle, the director, has obviously learned from the new Italians, and the approaches to a realistic film style are remarkable. The opening credits lead into the abandoned bunkers and between the anti-tank barriers on the former Siegfried Line, into the not so harmless game of hide-and-seek between the teenage "Rabbatzer" gangs and customs. These children's faces are undoubtedly as lifelike as they have been seen in German films for a long time: some led to rabbits by curiosity or a thirst for adventure, others sent by their parents. Most of them are still doing it as a new kind of sport, and yet some are already beginning to slide, being led step by step to crime or prostitution. Unfortunately, it also slips - out of consideration for the box office? - The course of the story turns more and more towards the conventional cinema: if a spiritual change is to be motivated, one drags an entire stolen church treasure along with the pious penance about it; and when a young marsh blossom has to be saved, Dieter Borsche arrives as a traveling academic in gradually worn-out nobility and lifts it up to him as a kind of Salvation Army apostle of democracy and the European Union. Noteworthy, however, are some young actors' faces: Jan Hendriks as rabbits chief and Inge Egger as modern demivierge. Not to forget Gisela von Collande, who now switched to maternity care and, with her careworn and embittered proletarian wife, gave perhaps the strongest performance. "

- The time , edition v. November 22, 1951

“The script for“ Sinful Frontier ”is tough and realistic. Through the peculiar border landscape with the elongated hilly forests, the blown up Siegfried Line bunkers, rusted barbed wire and the concrete blocks of the anti-tank barriers, through the steep smuggled alley of the "Himmelsleiter" and the pitch-dark Gemmenich railway tunnel , director Stemmle lets crowds of teenage coffee smugglers move in. Five hundred children play along. (…) At Barlog he also discovered the 22-year-old Jan Hendriks, who made his film debut as the brutal gang king Krapp seducing all women so brilliantly that the CCC immediately offered him a two-year contract. At the end of the film, the gang leader Krapp receives the fair punishment from the gun muzzle of his persecutors, because Stemmle owed that to the youth welfare offices. The youth welfare office in Aachen had raised a warning finger anyway: the film “Sinful Frontier” could easily be seen by less established characters as a glorification of gang smuggling. Stemmle braces himself against accusations of this kind with the argument that his film should be understood as a "social indictment". His rabble-rousers are by no means heroes, but hunted, misery children who are unhappy at heart. Many are driven to smuggle by their parents through social hardship. "

- Der Spiegel , edition 38 BC. September 19, 1951

“A very topical topic. A dramatic topic that really only needs to be told - the facts speak for themselves. Stemmle is excellent at something like that. He rummages excitedly in the files that have been made available to him. He studies the statistics and explains that the film he wants to make is actually written by life. All he needs to do is capture the material on the desk in front of him in pictures. And then something completely different comes out. No factual report, but colportage. What happened? Somebody has found out that this unique subject is not enough to make an exciting film, that a love story has to be included, that a villain is missing to seduce or almost seduce the young girl, that there has to be a detective who not only tracks down the hustle and bustle of the young people, but also falls in love with the said young girl; in short, there are still numerous complications to be created which have nothing to do with the problem of smuggling by children. This problem does not appear to be serious enough for a ninety minute film. The result: a factual film turns into a gossip film, and the whole thing has as much probability as the smuggling scene from the third act of the opera “Carmen”. It sucks when you consider what a great topic is being wasted here. "

- Curt Riess : There's only one. The Book of German Films after 1945. Page 313 f., Hamburg 1958

Paimann's film lists summed up: “A current report film with personal details that puts youth problems up for discussion and shakes them up; he is, with real actors and amateur actors, realistic but without gloom and has a remarkable effect on non-squeamish viewers. "

"Despite the realistic description of the milieu and good actors, the film does not provide a reliable picture of the time."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Original content of Sinful Frontier
  2. ^ Sinful limit in Paimann's film lists
  3. Sinful limit. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used