Shadow of the Night (1950)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Shadow of the night |
| Country of production | Germany |
| Publishing year | 1950 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Eugene York |
| script | Otto Heinz Jahn |
| production | Walter Koppel |
| music | Wolfgang Zeller |
| camera | Willy Winterstein |
| cut | Alice Ludwig-Rasch |
| occupation | |
and Franz Schafheitlin , Helmuth Gmelin , Änne Bruck , Carl Voscherau | |
Shadow of the Night is a German melodrama from 1949 by Eugen York . Hilde Krahl , Willy Fritsch and Carl Raddatz play the main roles.
action
Elga Magnus is happily married to her husband Ernst, a successful publisher. She was once the lover of a certain Richard Struwe, who had a criminal existence behind him and spent two years in prison for his crimes. Elga used this time to direct her life in a sensible way and to catch the affluent Ernst. Both happiness seem perfect if Struwe wouldn't one day leave the prison gates behind and show up at Elga's. He says frankly that he needs money and blackmailed Elga with both of their not exactly glamorous, shared pasts. Since Elga knows what is at stake for her seriousness and she does not want to confess her past to her noble husband, Elga develops a rather daring and absurd idea: She plans to fake her own death and presumably commits suicide.
In truth, Elga is leaving her old home and moving to another city. At first, everyone involved seems to fall for this charade, but for Elga this game of hide-and-seek means that she is sinking socially, until one day she begins to sell herself and her body in order to earn at least some money. It happens as it has to: It happens by chance that Ernst sees the prostitute Nelli, as the optically altered Elga now calls herself, again one day without immediately recognizing her. But somehow Nelli reminds him of Elga, who has disappeared without a trace, and the well-off businessman begins to fall in love with the prostitute. Magnus takes the presumably unknown person home with him. But not entirely dissimilar to the character of James Stewart in From the Realm of the Dead , Ernst mourns his Elga, who was believed dead, to such an extent that he practices a cult of the dead with her memory and wants to include Nelli in this madness. All of this is too much for “Nelli” and she admits that she is really Elga. Ernst is beside himself about what he believes is macabre and tasteless joke. He throws his own wife out of the house. Elga walks towards an uncertain future by the sea.
Production notes
The shooting took place in the Real-Film-Studios in Hamburg-Wandsbek as well as on Sylt (exterior shots). The premiere was on January 20, 1950. The Berlin premiere was on March 10, 1950.
Gyula Trebitsch took over the production management. Herbert Kirchhoff designed the film structures. Otto Meissner was a production assistant.
Reviews
Der Spiegel stated: “Carl Raddatz plays him with a woolly scarf, a club cap and rough language in a moderately criminal manner. (...) Willy Fritsch plays it with solemn noblesse, serious mustache and serious, significant wrinkles on the corners of the mouth. (…) Hilde Krahl plays with a blurred, destroyed face, a provocatively tremolous gait and heavily bleached H2 O2 curls. "
The Hamburger Abendblatt read: “A strip that shows real types and their fates, atmospherically successful, without length.”
In the lexicon of international film it says succinctly: "Lue colportage film."
Individual evidence
- ↑ is meant: the villain
- ↑ is meant: the husband
- ↑ Simply the force. Article in Der Spiegel of January 19, 1950, p. 36
- ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, January 28, 1950, p. 10
- ↑ Shadows of the Night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 17, 2020 .
Web links
- Shadows of the night in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Shadow of the night at filmportal.de