Track into the night

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Movie
Original title Track into the night
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1957
length 91 minutes
Rod
Director Günter Reisch
script Gerhard Neumann
Günter Reisch
production DEFA
music Helmut Nier
camera Walter Fehdmer
cut Wally cucumber
occupation

Track in the night is a German crime film of the DEFA of Günter Reisch from the year 1957th

action

The bricklayer Ulli has received a letter from his girlfriend Sabine, in which she asks him to come to her from Berlin as soon as possible. Sabine works as an HO saleswoman in a small village in the Zittau Mountains near the border with Czechoslovakia . But when Ulli arrives at the train station, Sabine is not waiting for him. He goes to the Fuchsbau inn alone . Sabine's friend Traudel only knows that Sabine has made her way to the train station. When she notices that Sabine's room has been cleared, she calls the police. In Sabine's room, the police only find a map that shows a trip to Hamburg. For them Sabine is now a refugee from the republic .

Traudel and Ulli cannot believe that, even if Traudel knows that Sabine had to leave an illegitimate child behind in Hamburg. Ulli goes looking for Sabine on his own, especially since he finds a part in the ashes of the inn that belongs to Sabine's suitcase. Every guest in the “Fuchsbau” seems suspicious to Ulli of having something to do with Sabine's disappearance. Above all, a man in a leather jacket arouses Ullis suspicion, after all he asked about Sabine in the HO. Ulli found a shoe print in the ashes of the "Fuchsbau", which he followed to a forest hut. Inadvertently, he triggers a mechanism that opens the hut's actually locked door. The seedy Eschka is already waiting for Ulli, who threatens him with a gun. A short time later, Sabine arrives at the hut, who acts as an intermediary between Eschka, the head of a troop of agents from the west, and the fellow spies and smugglers. Eschka tells Ulli that Sabine has an illegitimate child in Hamburg - Sabine, in turn, is forced to work with Eschka, because otherwise he will not release the child. In fact, Sabine is on the verge of suicide because of her hopeless situation. When border policemen approach the hut, Ulli, Sabine and Eschka hold still. Ulli does not want to endanger Sabine, but makes herself guilty.

The gang of agents wants to break away across the border. Ulli is released and wants to leave disappointed by Sabine. Then she calls him at the “Fuchsbau”, because she has been left alone in a school to wait for the man in the leather jacket, who has meanwhile obtained forged passports for the group. Ulli wants to go to her, but is overwhelmed by the group of agents and brought back to the forest hut. There it turns out that the man in the leather jacket is actually a mole from the State Security Service and was supposed to be spying on the group. The border guards on both sides of the border have long been alerted. When the agents try to flee across the border, they are arrested. Sabine, who is looking for Ulli, had an accident in the snow, but only broke one leg. In the end, Ulli and the man with the leather jacket drive to Berlin together. Ulli realizes that he will soon have to go back to a border - he wants to go to Hamburg. Before the SD man can turn away from him, Ulli makes it clear that he will only get Sabine's child there.

production

Track into the Night was the first crime film that Günter Reisch shot for DEFA. In addition, it was his second feature-length film directing work after Young Vegetables . The film, shot under the working title Smuggler King, premiered on October 25, 1957 in the Babylon cinema in Berlin . On February 14, 1958, it ran for the first time on DFF 1 on television.

Main actor Ulrich Thein sings and plays the song Fuchsbau-Boogie composed by him in the film , which is also accompanied by the Ernst Kunert quartet .

criticism

Contemporary critics called the film superficial, but rated it positively: “This film does not have any great ambitions, it does not go very deep, but what is shown is real and true.” The cinema viewers “need such films that undemanding the need satisfy after tension and real sensation ”, stated Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler , while other critics criticized the tiring uniformity of the scene representation.

For the lexicon of international film , Spur in die Nacht was "an unlogically structured and tension-free crime film that warns viewers against unauthorized actions and 'encourages' them to cooperate with the state organs."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Udo Klaus: On the DEFA film "Spur in die Nacht" . In: Die Weltbühne , No. 47, Berlin (GDR) 1957, p. 1503 f.
  2. ↑ Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler in: Filmspiegel , No. 25, 1957, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Trace into the night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 5, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used