Crime scene: shadow world

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Shadow world
Country of production Germany
original language German
Production
company
Bavarian radio
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
classification Episode 341 ( List )
First broadcast September 22, 1996 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Josef Rödl
script Joachim Masannek ,
Josef Rödl
production Veith von Fürstenberg
music Roman Bunka
camera Volker Tittel
cut Elke Dierbach
occupation

Shadow World is a television film from the crime series Tatort . The report produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk was first broadcast on September 22nd, 1996 in the first as the 341st episode in the series. It is their 14th case for Commissioners Batic and Leitmayr . A murder leads them into the homeless milieu and of all people a fighter for social engagement turns out to be guilty.

action

While the homeless of the city of Munich are rudely driven from the train station and the adjacent hotel grounds, Ingmar Borg celebrates himself as the city's benefactor. He ceremoniously hands over a symbolic check to the “Munich Police” association in a media-effective manner. Then he gets into his car with his girlfriend Michelle and accidentally runs over Sarah, one of the homeless. Since Borg had been drinking at the party, he doesn't care about the victim and drives away. Sarah's friend Bombadil saw the accident, but cannot stop Borg.

When Sara is found, she is sitting dead on a chair in downtown Munich and is tied up. The traces of the accident are obvious, but it is found that she died of heart failure. Batic and Leitmayr are investigating fatal hit and run. Since it quickly turns out that the victim was homeless, the investigators contact the social welfare office. The woman is not known there, but refers to Anna Wolf, who takes care of the Berbers . But nobody in the homeless shelter seems to know the woman either.

Borg is now presenting his next fundraising campaign for street children in Moscow to Ms. von Rasmussen. He has been socially committed for years, but also earns his money with this kind of charity and cannot afford a scandal. When he drives home, he is watched by Bombadil and two other homeless people. In a rage, Bombadil wants to button him up, but "Rabe" holds him back and says they will put Borg under so much pressure that he will go to the police himself. The very next day, Borg found a threatening letter in his mailbox, which he immediately tore up and went to his next planned event. It is conveniently located exactly in the parking garage in which he ran over Sarah. Since this is the homeless area, they watch the goings-on and can bring Borg under their control for a short time. They threaten him and demand a six-figure sum as hush money. The police are called and Batic and Leitmayr appear, as they are following every lead that leads to the homeless environment. Borg seems nervous to them and they want to keep an eye on him.

Batic and Leitmayr contact Anna Wolf again. She shows them the whereabouts of the homeless and knows about a group that is fighting to improve their living conditions. However, they are difficult to get at. Leitmayr finds a reference to a Hamburg lawyer who broke with the legal system and slipped into the homeless community. There he is under the name Bombadil and can be seen in newspaper photos together with the dead woman. In order to get to him and the group, Batic goes into the scene as a homeless man, but does not get any real contact because he is quickly exposed as a spy.

Bombadil doesn't want to have anything to do with either the police or the blackmailing of Rabe. He tells Borg's friend Michelle that she should go to the police. When Rabe demands the money from Borg in the evening and besieges the house, Michelle Leitmayr calls so that he can help her in her plight and she also has to tell him something important. As she speaks, she is strangled from behind. Leitmayr appears and finds Borg dejected on the floor and Michelle dead in the bathroom. The investigation reports indicate that the killer is believed to be left-handed. It is also noticeable that there are traces of the Berbers in the whole house, just not in the bathroom. Batic knows that Borg has been blackmailed, and so the investigation is directed against him as well. However, he denies having anything to do with an accident in the parking garage. However, it is noticeable that he is left-handed.

Since Bombadil is the prime suspect for the murder of Michelle, he is supposed to be arrested, but he escapes the police. In search of him, the investigators go to the train station and can record his lead. When they find him and confront him, he explains to them that he saw Borg run over Sarah and that he urged Michell to contact the police. So that they can convict Borg, they want to set a trap for him. Bombadil arranges a meeting with Borg and while Batic and Leitmayr wait nearby with a recording device, Bombadil tries to wrest a confession from him. He should admit that he ran over Sarah and has now also strangled his girlfriend so that she cannot betray him. But Borg doesn't answer, just gives him a plane ticket to Vienna. When Bombadil threatens to go to the police, he attacks him, but Batic and Leitmayr can intervene in time and arrest Borg.

background

For this crime scene, director and screenwriter co-author Josef Rödl dealt intensively with the fate of the homeless and, with the actor Hans Arndt, used an actor who used to live on the street himself. Today he is a lighting technician at the “Fraunhofer” (cabaret stage in Munich) and has managed to break out of the vicious circle. With Arndt he cast a role in Schattenwelt , which was very important to Rödl, although he does not speak a word in the film. For Arndt, on the other hand, the shooting was a journey into his own past. Even the police scenes were very close to him, because he had to experience such experiences enough. So Hans Arndt was able to give the film team a lot of helpful tips with the experiences from his homeless days.

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Schattenwelt on September 22, 1996 was seen by 8.37 million viewers in Germany and achieved a market share of 24.09% for Das Erste . In the crime scene blog, the episode reached number 300 out of a possible 911.

Reviews

Rainer Tittelbach from tittelbach.tv praises director Josef Rödl, who in his opinion has already proven several times that he knows his craft. He said: Schattenwelt is an “exciting, non-sedentary blues [and] politically correct in an unobtrusive way. [...] [So] with his second 'Tatort' one feels reminded of the Lang classic 'M - A city seeks a murderer' and of the uprising of the underworld led by Gustaf Gründgens. Otherwise Rödl relies on the actors: Bruno Ganz shines as a multiple broken dropout, Dominic Raacke gives the slippery business cynic and Erwin Leder as the pragmatic bum chief is remembered in this dark and weird crime thriller. "

On the Moviesection.de website, Thomas Ays awards three out of five possible stars and judges the crime scene: The viewer is allowed to “take a critical look at a hermetically sealed world within Munich - and probably a few other cities. Both the script and the staging succeed in doing this. One is made aware of the suffering that reigns among us, in what we call a rather rich state. The case, which would actually be the main topic, becomes a minor matter. ”The critic praises Bruno Ganz, who takes the monotony out of the crime scene, and writes:“ Here the versatile mime can show what he can do again. [...] Unfortunately, the two commissioners in 'Schattenwelt' come up short overall, which is to be regretted. Nevertheless, 'Schattenwelt' has turned into a decent, but not very exciting 'crime scene' from Munich because of the subject matter. "

The critics of the television magazine TV-Spielfilm describe the episode as a "gloomy milieu study [which] is played well".

Trivia

The name Tom Bombadil is borrowed from the novel The Lord of the Rings . This had been available in German translation since 1969/1970, but only became popular five years later with the first part of the successful film trilogy.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for crime scene: shadow world . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. Interview with Josef Rödl on tatort-fundus.de, accessed on January 28, 2014.
  3. ↑ Audience rating on tatort-fundus.de, accessed on January 28, 2014.
  4. Ranking list on tatort-blog.de, accessed on January 28, 2014.
  5. ^ Rainer Tittelbach film review on tittelbach.tv, accessed on January 28, 2014.
  6. Thomas Ays : Tatort - Shadow World (TV). In: Moviesection.de. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; accessed on August 19, 2019 .
  7. Short review on tvspielfilm.de, accessed on January 28, 2014.