Sparrow and the hole in the wall

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Episode of the series Sperling
Original title Sparrow and the hole in the wall
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company		 Polyphonic film and television company
length 89 minutes
classification Episode 1 ( list )
First broadcast March 2, 1996 on ZDF
Rod
Director Dominik Graf
script Rolf Basedow
music Andreas Bick ,
Dominik Graf,
Helmut Spanner
camera Benedict Neuenfels
cut Hana Müllner
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Sparrow and the fallen angel

Sperling and the Hole in the Wall is a German TV film directed by Dominik Graf from 1996 . It is the pilot of the ZDF crime series Sperling with Dieter Pfaff in the title role. Sperling's team consists of Karsten Rohde, embodied by Benno Fürmann , Vera Kowalski ( Petra Kleinert ) and Norbert Wachutka ( Hans-Joachim Grubel ). The main guest stars of this episode are Julia Jäger , Lutz Teschner , Ulrich Noethen , Gerd Lohmeyer and Andreas Hoppe .

The film comes from an idea by Rolf Basedow and Dieter Pfaff.

action

Preface: “'Look at this city.' Do you still remember the words? I've been looking at this city for a long time, even if I wasn't born here. But I've spent most of my life in Berlin. And to be honest, this is the place from which I would most like to look at Berlin. This corner there is cut to my size. But after all, I also have a job. I love Berlin and I tell you it has changed in the last few years. And I know what I'm talking about, I'm a cop. But you won't find me in the corridors of our head office and you won't find my name on the office doors of the individual departments. You might find me on the streets of this city and if you call me, my phone will ring where the new administrators of Berlin have deported us. This is our little outpost of civilization against the tide of crime that is supposedly rolling towards Berlin. Here we tell ourselves every day that if we don't make it, no one can. My name is sparrow. "

Chief Detective Hans Sperling, Serious Crime Investigation Group, and his colleague Karsten Rohde are out and about in Berlin when someone drives their bike in front of their car, gets up again and drives away in a hurry. The police officers start the chase and persuade the man, who is a bank robber, to give up. Sperling assures the stranger that if he gives up now he can help him. The experienced commissioner immediately noticed that he was not facing an unscrupulous bank robber, but a person who did not know what to do next.

A little later, Sperling talks to Wolfgang Krause, the bank robber. Even if his pistol was only a dummy, what he had done was serious robbery. Strangely enough, Krause masons and does not want to say anything about the reasons for his act. During an apartment search, Sperling meets Krause's wife and young daughter. She says that her husband is a gambler and cannot get out of the game. In the morning, two men were there who demanded money from their husband and probably also threatened him. He was completely changed afterwards. She hopes for help from Sperling, she doesn't know what to do next. Krause also gives the inspector a clue about a certain Rocky who dragged him into the matter and shows him the place where her husband played. Rocky is, however, Luther a gambler and former jockey. He admits that Krause was tricked into the game and then had him sign a large bill. The employees of Günther Ratzke, an owner of gaming clubs who Sperling has long known, use this scam to trick gamblers in order to then really cash in. Sperling obtains a search warrant for the illegal game club "Laguna". Before that, however, the club is observed by him and his employees. Karsten Rohde has been chosen to gamble away approved 800 DM in the club and to make inquiries. Contrary to expectations, however, Rohde wins time and again.

The next evening, the meticulously planned search of the Laguna Club begins with a surprise attack through a hole made in a wall from the outside. Only Henri Focke, a debt collector, managed to flee temporarily. In an establishment, Sperling comes across Wolfgang Krause's wife, who is prostituting herself there. It is difficult for Sperling to understand why she does this and does not confide in him. The inspector tries to get club owner Günther Ratzke to tear up the bill of exchange that Wolfgang Krause had signed. He plays with scissors, stone and paper with him , but loses. When the news came that Ratzke was on the loose again because the evidence against him was insufficient, Sperling had the idea of ​​declaring the 60,000 DM that Rohde had won the previous evening as lost again and to hand over the amount to Mrs. Krause, who can then redeem the promissory note signed by her husband. He asks her to forget who she got the money from, gives her the address of a good and cheap lawyer and points out that it would be good if her husband underwent therapy after his prison sentence.

Sperling: “In the end there are many questions. Will the young woman really wait for her husband? Yes i think so. Was it worth the effort despite everything? Oh yes for me, yes That is my truth, but maybe nothing is really true, except what is out there and what is out there is constantly changing. "

production

Production notes, filming

It is a production of the Polyphon Film and Television Company . The film was shot in and around Berlin .

Horizontal narrative style : Erwin, a former colleague of Sperling, tells another officer that his wife Jutta jumped from the Europacenter three years ago, when Sperling had weighed half a hundredweight less. After all, it looks like he has now got over this stroke of fate. Sperling suggests that he has always wanted to be a police officer, but because of all the work he did, he lost his wife, who killed herself, and his daughter, with whom he had hardly any contact.

Pfaff emphasized with regard to the character he was playing: "It is someone who has experienced a lot, is not cynical and has not given up, who still has a love and a devotion to people." The idea that in the first film There is no dead person to mourn in the series came from Pfaff himself, who found it annoying that whenever authors fail to think of something, someone has to die or a car crashes. He can no longer see it and think that most viewers do the same. For him, crime novels are more exciting when they have something to do with accuracy, cleverness and intelligence but also with wit. When asked what Sperling and Pfaff have in common, the actor said: "I think that I also have a positive charisma in person, that I have a certain warmth."

publication

Sperling and the Hole in the Wall was first broadcast by ZDF on March 2, 1996 in prime time.

This pilot episode was released together with all other 17 episodes on April 10, 2015 on DVD, published by Edel Germany GmbH. In addition, on October 2, 2006, Universum Film GmbH released a DVD box with the first four films in the series from 1996/1997.

reception

criticism

The critics of the television magazine TV Spielfilm gave the film the best possible rating, thumbs up, for humor and claim it was each given one of three possible points, for suspense two. They stated the film and its actors: “A heavyweight with a sure instinct”.

Rainer Tittelbach wrote on his page tittelbach.tv : Even more than 20 years after its TV premiere, this first Grimme Prize-winning 'Sperling' episode is a dramaturgically and thematically extraordinary crime thriller and also a delicacy in terms of film aesthetics. A film from the new Berlin, a film about the promises of the night and the loneliness of the day. Impressively close to everyday life & narrated in detail, staged in a concentrated manner and with a downright sensational score. Only repeated once in the ZDF main program (in 2000), but sold to pay TV for years! The critic awarded the film the highest rating of six stars. “The Grimme Prize -winning prelude” of the series is said to be “narrated close to everyday life, staged in a concentrated manner” and captivates “with its milieu accuracy”. “Sensationally good” is “the score that repeatedly varies the pregnant, dynamic 'Sperling' theme from the legendary 'I-look-at-this-city' intro”. “Sperling” is “not a TV do-gooder, but a lovable, but also complex personality. His sentimentality and the beauty of Julia Jäger, whose figure was developed by the author Basedow as a counter-image to the dirt of the street, "still shines today and warms the capital, bathed in cool blue".

At Spiegel Online it was said that Chief Inspector Sperling (Dieter Pfaff) was someone who moves in the “Berlin swamp” and grapples with the “masterminds of illegal gambling” “full of melancholy”, “a Sisyphus” who knows that it is “ no final cleanliness ”and“ justice in it ”consists in“ alleviating the injustice a little ”. Under the direction of Dominik Graf and the script by Rolf Basedow, “a deep black, sparkling and at the same time believable chamber play unfolds, which is brilliantly photographed”.

In the newspaper Die Tageszeitung , Stefan Kuzmany found that 'The hole in the wall' was “not a spectacular case. More important and funnier than the solution to the crime ”are“ the incidental issues, the relationships between the characters and their problems ”. It went on to say: “People are everywhere: in Sperling's local pub, where he always has lunch at a table tailored to his stomach; at the office, where Sperling caught the young colleague Vera Kowalski (Petra Kleinert) in traffic in the office and of course didn't whistle; at Alexanderplatz, where he catches a pickpocket - and of course lets go again after the loot has been returned. "In conclusion, Kuzmany wrote:" So damn sympathetic policemen are walking around in Berlin, you could think that the Senator for the Interior bribed ZDF. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sperling and the hole in the wall at crew united
  2. ↑ a b Rainer Tittelbach : Series "Sperling and the hole in the wall". Dieter Pfaff, Fürmann, Jäger, Basedow, Dominik Graf. Crime classics without dead people see page tittelbach.tv. Retrieved November 27, 2019.
  3. ↑ Dieter Pfaff is Sperling Fig. DVD cover Dieter Pfaff is Sperling, the complete series 1996–2007
  4. ↑ Sperling 1996–1997 ill. DVD cover ZDF
  5. ↑ Sparrow and the hole in the wall cf. tvspielfilm.de (including 16 film images). Retrieved November 27, 2019.
  6. ↑ Sperling and the hole in the wall In: Der Spiegel 9/1996, February 26, 1996. Retrieved November 27, 2019.
  7. ↑ Stefan Kuzmany : Make margarine out of shit. Dieter Pfaff again as a friendly bull: "Sperling and the hole in the wall" In: Die Tageszeitung, March 2, 1996. Retrieved on November 27, 2019.
  8. ↑ Sparrow and the hole in the wall see page kino.de. Retrieved November 27, 2019.