They all knew each other
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | They all knew each other |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1958 |
| length | 83 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Richard Groschopp |
| script |
Carl Andrießen Lothar Creutz Richard Groschopp |
| production | DEFA |
| music | Wilhelm Neef |
| camera | Eugen Klagemann |
| cut | Friedel Welsandt |
| occupation | |
| |
They all knew each other is a German crime film of the DEFA of Richard Groschopp from the year 1958th
action
The fictional town of Isenau in the GDR: In the car factory, two newly developed cars are checked for their top speed on a test track. In the middle of the route, both cars come off the lane and overturn. A car burns out completely, the driver Köhler dies. The driver of the second car is seriously injured in a hospital. The case is being investigated by the employees of the State Security Service Böhnke and Kilian. It quickly turns out that the oil in the car has been mixed with a chemical that caused the pistons to stick. The saboteur must be active in the factory and have been in contact with the car shortly before the start.
One circumstance puzzles the investigators. The technical director Nowak and the foreman of the test workshop Klausner, who was supposed to ride in one of the cars, were called by Secretary Ms. Bobinger shortly before the test drive and appointed to head the plant. Ms. Bobinger, however, who is unmistakable by her Swabian dialect on the phone, claims that she did not use the phone. She came to the plant from Stuttgart in 1950 and is a good friend of Director Nowak, who can vouch for her. Little by little, everyone at the plant is questioned, but no one can name a suspect. Everyone has known each other for a long time, only the intern and crime fanatic Brückner is relatively new to the plant. Above all, the mechanic Auerbach directs suspicion on Brückner, who occasionally gets into debt on the regulars table of the employees. Brückner, in turn, begins to investigate on his own. He had once lent books to the killed charcoal burner, which he now takes from his room. There he also steals the film from Köhler's camera and secretly develops the photos.
Ms. Bobinger receives an anonymous phone call asking her to flee to the West. On Nowak's advice, she reports the call to the two men from State Security and is then relieved. In front of Klausner's daughter Herta, who works as Nowak's second secretary in the plant, she indicates that the investigators already know a lot more than the workers in the plant suspect. Herta panics. During a phone conversation with her father, she pretends to have various errands to do. She says goodbye with a saying in Swabian that Frau Bobinger usually says. Klausner becomes suspicious and begins to search Herta's room. He finds an escape suitcase in her closet and in it, among other things, false papers. Meanwhile, Herta has rushed to the head of the Schott auto repair shop, Achim. It turns out that Achim is the mastermind behind the sabotage. He prepares everything for the escape. Herta returns home and finds her father in her room, who has cleared out the escape suitcase and is helpless. After the death of his wife, he raised Herta alone and gave her complete freedom. He now wishes that she would have let him drive him to his death with Koehler. Herta reports everything to him. Achim Schott and they have been a couple for a long time. Achim once made it clear to her that the Isenau car plant should actually belong to his family and that the state expropriation of the plant is illegal. On behalf of his uncle in the FRG, he resorted to the manipulation of the wagons to stop the progress in the Isenau plant. Herta's call as alleged Mrs. Bobinger was not intended; Herta saved her father on her own initiative. Since then, Achim has clearly shown her that he actually only used her for his cause.
The angry Klausner goes to Achim to confront him. At the same time Brückner appears at the State Security, because he too has made discoveries. There were recordings in Köhler's camera showing Herta with Achim. Brückner was also in Achim's workshop to ask him about the causes of the piston blockage, but found no one there. In the hallway, however, he found capsules with the very same means with which the oil of the wrecked car was manipulated. When Brückner left, Herta comes into the office and asks Böhnke and Kilian to save their father. Both actually wanted to wait until they could find out who Achim's middleman was in the plant, but now they are forced to initiate the search. Meanwhile, Brückner sees the angry Klausner rushing into Achim's workshop. He wants to notify the State Security, but the connection cannot be established quickly enough. On his own he hurries after Klausner, who meanwhile has been replaced by Achim k. o. was beaten and dragged into an adjoining room. Brückner now sees that young Auerbach is Achim's middleman. Brückner is also knocked down by Achim and locked in a cellar with Klausner. During the escape, Auerbach damaged a water pipe so that the room slowly filled with water. At first, Böhnke, Kilian and his men could not see any entry point at the workshop, but soon they found a hidden garage door and made it to the sound of the water running out. They save the injured Klausner and Brückner from the cellar.
Achim and Auerbach want to flee across the border, steal a wagon and also threaten a farmer in the restricted area who has to take them with him on his horse-drawn vehicle , but both are finally caught and arrested by the border troops .
production
They all knew each other was filmed under the working title The Honest Name in 1957. The film premiered on April 30, 1958 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin and was shown in GDR cinemas on May 1, 1958. On July 25, 1958, the film was shown on DFF 1 for the first time on East German television.
It was the first collaboration between director Groschopp and screenwriters Creutz and Andrießen (other films were made for Catalonia in 1959, Before Lightning Strikes 1959 and Love and the Co-Pilot in 1961). The script, in turn, had to be rewritten shortly after filming began. Originally, the figure of Brückner was created as an undercover investigator for the State Security. "Shortly after filming began, however, the authorities introduced a new strategy according to which their employees appeared openly in the factories." Brückner therefore presented the new screenplay as a crime fanatic who investigates out of his own criminal interest.
criticism
The contemporary critics wrote that the plot "runs smoothly ..." and that director Groschopp "[works] out the moments of tension appropriately" and that the cast ensemble well together.
The Progress film distribution called you all knew each other as a "thriller of the cold war , the Stasi presented as a means of defense against Western provocations." Ralf Schenk scored the film to the "good entertaining, formal uninspired genre productions" of the trio Groschopp, Creutz and Andrießen.
For the film service it was an "exciting, only minor flawed crime film, whose one-sided political tendency is unmistakable and which according to the motto 'attention, enemy is listening!' polemicized against excessive confidence. "
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 544-545 .
Web links
- They all knew each other in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- They all knew each other at filmportal.de
- They all knew each other at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Film data on defa.de
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 544 .
- ^ Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in: Filmspiegel , No. 11, 1958, p. 3.
- ↑ They all knew each other on 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.
- ↑ 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. 151.
- ↑ They all knew each other. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
