Seilergasse 8

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Movie
Original title Seilergasse 8
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1960
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Hans-Joachim Kunert
script Günter Kunert
Hans-Joachim Kunert
production DEFA
music André Asriel
camera Eugen Klagemann
cut Hildegard Conrad
occupation

Seilergasse 8 is a German crime film of the DEFA of Hans-Joachim Kunert from the year 1960th

action

The house at Seilergasse 8 in Rostock : water drips from the ceiling of the Schlehufer family. The upper tenant Lisa Gau does not open the apartment on knocking and ringing, so Schlehufer forcibly gains entry. The hot water tap in the kitchen is running and the water has already flooded the kitchen. In the bedroom Schlehufer finds the young tenant dead in her bed. For the sake of simplicity, the investigation is carried out by Albert Schirding from the murder commission of the People's Police - he also lives at Seilergasse 8. However, a survey of the residents remains without results, as no one knew the young woman well.

At first everything points to suicide: An empty bottle of veronal was found next to the body , the key to the apartment was inside and there are no signs of violence. However, there is no motive for suicide. Over time it becomes clear that Lisa was murdered: She was five months pregnant, there are no fingerprints on the veronal bottle and water glass and Kurt Lisowski from forensics cannot find any other fingerprints e.g. B. prove on door handles. He also finds an unidentifiable mass on a spoon. It turns out to be potassium cyanide , and the autopsy also eventually reveals death from potassium cyanide.

The murder investigation begins and two leads soon emerge: One leads to a worker at the port. He used to be Lisa's boyfriend and his cigarette butts were found in the apartment. Since the faucet was turned on, someone unfamiliar with the conditions in the house must have last been in Lisa's apartment: The hot water is turned off at night, so that the faucet must have been turned on at night, but not turned off again when there was no water. During an argument that neighbors could hear, he reportedly threatened that she would leave before he did. However, he has an alibi for the night of the crime. The second lead in turn leads to Albert's own son Peter, who is studying medicine. He knew Lisa and one of his books was in her apartment. Some time ago, potassium cyanide was stolen from the medicine cabinet in the university hospital and Peter would have had access to it. Peter, who has a bad relationship with his father anyway, is outraged by the suspicion and temporarily moves in with his friend Werner Hallgast. He lives with his fiancé Barbara, who in turn is the daughter of his professor. Although Werner is about to fail the professor's subject, the professor will help him through the exams because of his relationship with Barbara.

Albert wants to give up the case because he does not want to investigate his own son, but his wife can change his mind: If Peter is guilty, it will say that Albert wanted to avoid the truth. If he is not, it is Albert's duty to absolve his son of any suspicion. Albert continues to investigate, especially since he also believes his son is innocent. In a direct confrontation, Peter tells him that he did not have the book in his possession at the time of the murder. When the potassium cyanide was stolen, he was also not at the university.

Albert and his colleague Herbert Zallner happened to be in Lisa's apartment when the drunken sailor Heinzi and his girlfriend came into the apartment. Both of them received the duplicate key from Lisa and do not know anything about her death. Heinzi's girlfriend warns Herbert about Lisa's boyfriend Uwe, who even beat another rival. Uwe is a seaman. Herbert and Albert can use stamps to reconstruct that Uwe must be on the MS Erfurt. If he is still on board, he is the culprit. They notify the MS Erfurt over the radio and Lisa's friend reports to the investigators that he had a fight with an admirer of Lisa's - Werner Hallgast. Meanwhile, Peter has found a letter in Werner's books, according to which Werner could soon take up a job in Hamburg, Germany. Werner also has to prove his academic achievements. Peter shows Barbara this letter and opens her eyes at the same time. Lisa was with him a few days ago and told him that she was expecting a child from him. She said she was six months pregnant and wanted him to help her abort the child. Peter refused, especially since she confessed to him on the evening of her death that she wanted to keep the child. Peter now knows that he could not have been the father of the child, as he left Lisa six months ago, but she was only in the 5th month of pregnancy when she was found dead. Barbara tells him that Werner and Lisa were known to each other and that he was with her at the time of the crime. Peter had also loaned Werner the book that was found in the dead man's apartment. Another book on poisons has a bookmark in the chapter on potassium cyanide. The engagement to Barbara, in turn, only served one excuse: Werner wanted to make sure that he passed the professor’s exam so that he could then leave for the West - no one would ruin the future of his future son-in-law by failing the exam.

When Werner comes home, Peter locks him up after a short tussle and calls the police. Werner flees through the room window and goes to the harbor. Here he steals the wallet with a port access card from a Danish sailor in order to escape to the West, but is also arrested by Peter after a large manhunt. During interrogation, he testifies that Lisa had to die because she wanted to keep the child in the end. He had brought suspicion to Peter because he had hoped that Albert would stop the investigation if he noticed that they were running against his own son. The case has been resolved and Peter and Albert go home reconciled.

production

The outdoor shots of the film, shot under the working title Die Drei, took place in Rostock from 1959 . Among other things, the Rostock port , which is currently under construction, is one of the locations of the film.

The film premiered on August 11, 1960 at the Baltic Sea Week in Rostock and in the Berlin Colosseum and was shown in GDR cinemas the next day. On May 19, 1961, the film was shown on DFF 1 for the first time on GDR television and was also shown in West German cinemas from October 13, 1961.

Friedrich Richter and Amy Frank, who play the retired couple Mitbe in the film, were actually married to each other.

criticism

Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler found that the commissioners of the homicide squad “sometimes seem a bit like private detectives” and criticized that André Asriel's music too often “is used to bridge lengths and to create tension where it actually happens Direction and representation should have been created. "

For the film-dienst , Seilergasse 8 was a “DEFA crime film in which the much touted 'socialist human community' is critically examined and taken to the point of absurdity. As a psychological portrait of a house community with its different individuals, it is interesting and well played, even if in the end it is loaded with politically instructive tendencies. "

Ralf Schenk stated that the film "provides a rudimentary study of alienation."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See progress-film.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.progress-film.de  
  2. ↑ See Seilergasse 8 on defa.de
  3. ^ Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in: Filmspiegel. No. 19, p. 1960, p. 7.
  4. ^ Seilergasse 8. In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ↑ Ralf Schenk: In the middle of the Cold War 1950 to 1960 . In: Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 144.