The voice of the other
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The voice of the other |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German , French |
| Publishing year | 1952 |
| length | 87 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Erich Engel |
| script |
Robert A. Stemmle Erich Engel |
| production | Gyula Trebitsch |
| music | Michael Jary |
| camera | Ekkehard Kyrath |
| cut | Klaus Dudenhöfer |
| occupation | |
| |
The voice of the other , when it is re-released as Under the Thousand Lanterns , is a German fiction film drama from 1952 by Erich Engel with Michel Auclair , Hanna Rucker , Gisela Trowe , Ernst Schröder and René Deltgen as the investigative detective in the leading roles. The story is based on the novel The Voice of the Murderer by Robert Gilbert .
action
The singer Elisa drives to the house of the composer Fred Apel, who is preparing her new revue “Großstadtnächte”. The front door is open and the apartment is incredibly quiet. Elisa first makes herself comfortable in an armchair when she is very shocked: Apel is dead on the floor. In a panic, she rushes out of the house and goes to the apartment of the Braun couple, who are friends. FO Braun is currently working on the revue texts for Apel's composition for “Big City Nights”. He and his wife Betty hear the bad news from Elisa and are only concerned that Apel will no longer be able to compose the revue to the end. In the meantime, Apel's housekeeper Auguste has come home, discovered the dead person and immediately alerted the police. The appears in the form of Inspector Hennings. The French instrumentator of Apels Musik, Michel Dumas, comes to Apels house, but he cannot help clarify the case. Apel recorded his compositions on tape and then sent them to Braun. He is only affected by the composer's death to the extent that the new revue will probably no longer be completed and he will not need any headlines that report the composer's violent death. The autopsy reveals that Apel was hit on the head with a heavy object.
In the hope of finding out something about the last minutes of life of the dead composer, Braun, Michel and theater director Lüders listen to the last tapes after the funeral in honor of Apel. Betty receives the crucial ribbon from Auguste, who is now supposed to help out in the Braun household. It turns out that Michel Dumas was at Apel on the crucial evening. The suspicion arises that the sensitive Frenchman killed Apel because he had passed Michel's compositions as his own. On the last tape, Braun and his wife hear Michel and Apel arguing violently. It seems as if Michel claimed Apel's composition as his own and thus stole his music. In fact, the situation is exactly the other way around: Michel has been writing “his” music for Apel for some time, because works under Apel's name sell better, as Michel Dumas is a completely blank slate in the industry. While the Braun couple is discussing how to behave in the face of this knowledge, a little romance develops between Michel and Elisa. When the Brauns noticed how perfectly Michel and Elisa harmonize perfectly on stage, they decided to burn the magnetophone tape with the arguments between Apels and Michels. But suddenly the tape has disappeared.
At Elisa Lorenz's, the taxi driver appears who drove her to Apel on the decisive evening, immediately before he was found dead. This makes Elisa the main suspect. When Elisa learns that Michel was at Apel's that same evening, she assumes that he must have killed the composer because she wasn't. Back in Paris, Michel had to read in a German newspaper that Elisa Lorenz was arrested on suspicion of murder. When she was released from prison, the revue “Big City Nights” could still be performed. Michel also returned from France in time for the premiere. Now all things are cleared up: the housekeeper Auguste had taken the missing tape and passed it on to the police. In Apel's apartment, to which Commissioner Hennings asked Elisa and Michel, he tells the lovers that Apel died of natural causes: he suffered a stroke, his head hit the piano (which explains his head wound) and finally fell to the ground. All of this could be inferred from the noises on the tape recording, which correspond exactly to Michel's statement. Elisa and Michel happily sink into each other's arms.
Production notes
The Voice of the Other was created in Hamburg from November 12, 1951 to mid-January 1952 (studio and outdoor recordings) and was premiered on April 10, 1952 in the Hamburg Barke cinema. The reviews were good, but the audience remained largely absent, and so The Voice of the Other was renamed Under the Thousand Lanterns a little later . Even after this measure, there was no success.
The German television premiere took place on August 26, 1965 on ARD .
Walter Koppel took over the overall management, Gyula Trebitsch the production management. Herbert Kirchhoff and Albrecht Becker designed the film structures. Werner Pohl was responsible for the good sound, Erna Sander took care of the costumes. Werner M. Lenz assisted chief cameraman Ekkehard Kyrath .
Michel Auclair sings, playing the piano, the chanson Under the 1000 Lanterns . Hanna Rucker will later perform this song as part of the revue.
The film took part in the 1952 Cannes International Film Festival as a German contribution .
useful information
With this film, the producing Real-Film in Hamburg-Wandsbek had to temporarily suspend its film production at the beginning of 1952. The Federal Government of Konrad Adenauer , under the leadership of Federal Interior Minister Robert Lehr, had canceled the urgently needed default federal guarantees for the Hamburg film producer Walter Koppel, since he was assumed to be close to communism due to an assumed, temporary cooperation with DEFA , the GDR state company. As Der Spiegel wrote in a May 1952 issue, the production manager Gyula Trebitsch, the authorized signatory Walter Pröhl and the head of the audio engineering department Robert Fehrmann made an affidavit with the following content: It was "untrue [...] that in 1951 rear projection recordings, music recordings and mixtures were awarded to DEFA by Real-Film G. mb H. or carried out on behalf of Real-Film. ". For a while it seemed as if Real-Film could no longer be held and a sale to the NWDR was considered after the Federal Constitutional Court, allegedly because of excessive workload, put the matter on hold . It was only when the Federal Minister of the Interior fully rehabilitated Real-Film in February 1953 and a federal guarantee could again be guaranteed that Real-Film resumed its work with the Heinz Rühmann production No fear of large animals .
Reviews
In the mirror it was said: “Director Erich Engel and author RA Stemmle muted the thriller novel Robert Gilbert about the hunt for the murderous voice to a criminal chamber play in the theater environment. A magnetophone tape as deus ex machina, first burdensome, then saving. Almost by the way, Engel succeeded in creating a German counterpart to the Broadway satire "Alles über Eva". Real tension and good profiles. The most polished film of the year that you can send to Cannes with a clear conscience. "
On newfilmkritik.de you can read: “It is a game with many unknowns, with ambiguous formulations, sarcastic puns and unexpected phrases. The fable is complicated; something is always discovered, uncovered and then discarded again. An atmosphere of uncertainty prevails. [...] The staging fluctuates between the spoken theater of the boulevard and the large picture of the revue theater, which however does not turn into a spectacle. […] Everything takes place in dark interiors, which weigh heavily on the mind. Even the revue theater is just a big, heavy hall. Ernst Schröder dominates every scene and leaves little room for his partners; only Carl-Heinz Schroth as the sarcastic theater director and Michel Auclair - stoic, taciturn and melancholy - can assert themselves next to him. "
The lexicon of the international film judges: "An intelligently written and staged crime film that goes beyond the pure tension to the differentiated representation of interpersonal conflicts."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fritz Kortner and Horst Budjuhn were unnamed involved in the script.
- ↑ Report in: Der Spiegel from May 21, 1952 , accessed on March 1, 2020
- ↑ The Voice of the Other on newfilmkritik.de , accessed on March 1, 2020
- ↑ Review in: Der Spiegel from April 16, 1952 , accessed on March 1, 2020
- ↑ Review on newfilmkritik.de , accessed on March 1, 2020
- ↑ The Voice of the Other. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 1, 2020 .
Web links
- The voice of the other in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The voice of the other at filmportal.de