Under suspicion: undercover play
| Episode in the series Under Suspicion | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Face down game |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Production company |
Pro GmbH |
| length | 90 minutes |
| classification | Episode 1 ( list ) |
| First broadcast | August 2, 2002 on arte |
| Rod | |
| Director | Friedemann Fromm |
| script | Alexander Adolph |
| production | Mario cancer |
| music | Manu short |
| camera | Jo home |
| cut | Vessela Martschewski |
| occupation | |
| |
| chronology | |
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Successor → |
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Verdecktes Spiel is a German television film by Friedemann Fromm from 2002 . It is the pilot for the ZDF crime series Unter Verdacht with Senta Berger as Dr. Eva Maria Prohacek in the lead role. In addition to the by Gerd Anthoff embodied superiors Prohaceks Dr. Claus Reiter and the investigator André Langner, played by Rudolf Krause , play key roles with guest stars Margret Völker , Heinz-Josef Braun , Christoph Gareisen , Wolfgang Böck and Thommy Schwimmer .
This first case is not finally resolved until many years later in the last episode of the series Eva's Last Walk .
action
Main storyline
Detective Dr. Eva Maria Prohacek starts her job at the newly opened Munich police station 143, where only official offenses are dealt with. Prohacek had long taught interrogation technology as a lecturer in Augsburg at the police college. She is assigned the chief inspector André Langner, who can hardly hide his anger about it and proves to be more disruptive than helpful during an interrogation. Prohacek ignores Langner's inadequate behavior. Her first cases brought before her include a police officer who is accused of having used his service machine for phone sex , and the interrogation of a Ms. Sempf, the wife of a police officer, who is said to have obtained advantages in a car repair shop using his police ID. Sempf comes for questioning drunk and tells Prohacek that her husband killed a wife Weiss and then set a fire to cover up his crime, for which he is said to have received a lot of money. Martina Weiss had two underage children who found their mother dead in the already smoking house after school. When Prohacek visits the woman the next day, she revokes everything she said the day before. Prohacek researched and found that at the time no investigations were made into the case, and rather a rather unrelated matter was assumed as given and the case was filed.
When Ms. Sempf speaks to Prohacek again and confesses that she is afraid they might kill her after Sarah and Lukas Weiss, the two children of the dead, have been brought before her, a man suddenly appears who claims to be Sempf's lawyer be. Prohacek this occurs in Spanish. When she presented Sempf's statement, which had already been recorded on tape, to her superior Dr. Claus Reiter wants to audition, there is nothing left on the tape. She suspects Langner to have his hands in the game, who vehemently denies this and in turn accuses her of having only got the post because she was "a halfway representative noodle that nobody would take seriously anyway" and also too old and yes, half retired. She has the post because she is "guaranteed not to kick anyone out". He had the worst rating in the entire station, but he didn't erase any tapes, he didn't care about anything anyway.
All attempts by Prohacek to contact Sempf fail. Then she finds the woman dead in her apartment. Obviously there was violence involved. Reiter advises her to let the case rest. Prohacek then seeks a conversation with Langner and explains to him that she is not a Reiters puppet, whom he obviously does not like and that she would like to continue the case, something is wrong. Prohacek and Langner are now trying to find out where Sempf has gone through the officer Tann, who was interrogated because of the sex talks and who was Sempf's superior at the time. Tann says that Sempf let his colleagues do his work, and that he was only ever interested in money. After retiring from the police force, he is said to have had a real estate company. After all, Prohacek and Langner find a reference to the “Paradise Garden” residential model. Both speak there as a couple and feign interest in home ownership in order to be able to inspect documents.
When Prohacek Reiter confronted her with her thesis that Sempf was a straw man for a clientele of people who knew that the area in which Ms. Weiss's house was also soon to be designated as a building area, his reaction speaks for itself himself. Prohacek is now certain that Reiter also has a hand in this unclean thing. Reiter's reaction is shameful. He asks Prohacek into his office and introduces her to the police psychologist Mackenroth, in order to then propose the thesis that Prohacek feels responsible for what he calls the suicide of Ms. Sempf and therefore developed a conspiracy theory. Then Reiter also has the audacity to bring the conversation to the death of Prohacek's son. How casually does he want to know if she still feels guilty about it. When he could not prevent Prohacek from further investigations even with these actions, he sat down next to Prohacek during an interrogation of the building authority employee Bangert and opened a file that was clearly visible to her and showed a photo of the detective's dead son. Prohacek struggles with himself, but continues the interrogation anyway. However, the prosecutor and judge tell her that what she brings is not enough to bring a lawsuit.
When Langner presented his treacherous conversation with Reiter, beaming with joy, Prohacek said she had already been suspended from work and that disciplinary proceedings had been initiated against her, as had investigations by the Augsburg youth welfare office. That night Sempf appears at Prohacek's and after a brief fight presses a pillow on her face. When the officer came to, she was lying on the bathroom floor and saw Sempf tying a noose to hang it up. Prohacek fights desperately against the man who is physically superior to her and at the last moment manages to stab him with a stick in the neck. The former policeman died instantly. A car with Bangert was parked in front of her door. This is still tight and does not reveal who has provided him with information from the police and who is involved in the extremely lucrative construction affair “Paradise Garden”. The rider has beads of sweat on his forehead, but nothing can be proven without a corresponding statement. And so Eva Prohacek and Reiter have to step in front of the waiting journalists while the police chief praises her and announces that she will be the deputy of Dr. Be a rider, their mentor!
Parallel plot
Prohacek takes care of 10-year-old Cem as guardian, who is housed in a home in Augsburg, runs away from there and is reprimanded by her. Before she puts him in a taxi and sends him back, she goes out to eat with him and to the movies. Since he raves about expensive sneakers, she buys them on the other day and has them sent to the home in Augsburg. From this, Reiter tries to twist a rope for her by initiating an investigation that she has approached Cem with sexual intent. This is intended to support the fact that Prohacek is unsustainable at her post.
Reiter also does not shy away from using Eva Prohacek's bad fate to try to silence her. The detective was at the wheel of the car that had an accident when a deer unexpectedly appeared on the road. Her 17-year-old son was fatally injured. She was then locked in the car with her dead child for three hours before help came, resulting in trauma. Scraps of memories keep pushing themselves forward and complicate their everyday life.
production
Production notes, background
The film was shot in 2001 in and around Munich .
Senta Berger described her figure and its situation with the words: “She stabs a wasp's nest, and she has very few friends.” Prohacek does not see the loneliness as “being forced upon him, but rather correct. This Dr. Eva Prohacek looks good on the outside, appears competent and self-confident. But behind the facade an emotionally troubled person becomes clear. A woman who can easily be pulled from under her feet, but who in return also wants to fight for her ideals ”. Berger emphasized that she understood the film as “a political thriller, less as a crime thriller”. One wants to show "political entanglements and not just criminal cases". She “didn't want to play a commissioner like Bella Block or Rosa Roth . Better one who critically examines the police apparatus and thus also the social system. ”According to Berger,“ a job that is actually mainly done by women ”,“ because they obviously have a greater sensitivity ”.
publication
The opening episode was premiered on August 2, 2002 in prime time on arte's program .
reception
criticism
The critics of the television magazine TV Spielfilm gave the film the best possible rating; the thumb was pointing upwards, there was one of three possible points for excitement and three for aspiration and action: “Bare, gloomy images and a broken heroine create excitement.” Conclusion: “High tension with 'difficult' figures”; later: "A strong start to an exceptional series."
The Munich Film Festival praised: "A committed crime thriller that also critically examines the work of the police."
Rainer Tittelbach gave the film on his page tittelbach.tv 5½ out of 6 possible stars and stated: “Anyone who deals with civil servant crime has bad cards. The police do not like to see 'nest polluters' either. Detective Eva Prohacek feels this. In a routine case, she comes across a woman who claims that her husband, an ex-police officer, has committed contract killing. Thanks to Alexander Adolph (book), Friedemann Fromm (director) and Jo Heim (camera), 'Verdecktes Spiel' has become an intelligent, very suggestively staged crime story. For that, the Adolf Grimme Prize was rightly awarded. ”Senta Berger can show off her“ qualities ”in this opening film. A tailor-made start for 'Under Suspicion' ”.
On the Kino.de page it was said that Fromm had succeeded in "an emotional implementation of Alexander Adolph's script, which often provided atmospheric, but sometimes also drastic images" [...]. In the production “Senta Berger impressed as a commissioner with a past, as well as Rudolf Krause as her assistant Langner and Gert Anthoff as the initially clumsy superior rider”. Although it remains to be seen to what extent the new series is given enough variety by “the self-imposed restriction to police-internal cases”, “the end of the pilot film holds a high potential for tension for the next episodes: Since Reiter cannot be proven, Prohacek has to go with him get the press praised for clarifying the case ”.
Tilmann P. Gangloff rated the film for the internet portal evangelisch.de and said that this was a thriller "in which everything is right". Director Friedemann Fromm can “confidently afford the luxury of foregoing any gimmicky; the excellent screenplay by Alexander Adolph ”is“ so careful, especially in the details, that the story alone provides enough tension ”. Jo Heim's camera work also contributes to "the fact that one can hardly avoid the dramaturgy". “Again and again” showed “the cool images of a lone fighter in a cold environment who opposed an overpowering opponent without any support”. However, “in her initially completely useless assistant […] she finally found a no less committed comrade. Like Prohacek this Langner crack [e] ", is" typical for the figure: with a lot of patience and empathy, but also sometimes with a tactically well-considered provocation ".
Awards
The episode Verdecktes Spiel received the Adolf Grimme Prize in Marl in 2003 in the “Fiction & Entertainment” section. It went to the three main actors Berger, Althoff and Krause as well as to the scriptwriter Alexander Adolph and the director Friedemann Fromm . In addition, the Juliane Bartel Media Prize went to the production.
Web links
- Suspect: Obscured game in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Under suspicion: Undercover play at crew united
- Under suspicion: Covered game at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ See crew-united.com
- ^ A b Rainer Tittelbach : Series "Under Suspicion - Verdecktes Spiel". Senta Berger, Friedemann Fromm, Alexander Adolph. Tailor-made crime series prelude see page tittelbach.tv., August 2, 2002. Accessed on June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Under suspicion: Covered game See tvspielfilm.de (including 9 film images). Retrieved June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Under suspicion - covert play see page filmfest-muenchen.de. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
- ↑ Under suspicion: covert play see page kino.de. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
- ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff: TV tip: "Under suspicion: Covered game" see page evangelisch.de. Retrieved June 26, 2020.