When the Berlin Wall finally came down, East Germans danced for joy in the streets. No more Stasi, no more food shortages, no more travel restrictions, and no more fiddling with their Trabis to get the damned things started. At the time, most people in East Germany were glad to see the backside of the … Continue reading Herzsprung
Category: Crime
Radio Killer
It’s no secret that the East Germans and the West Germans spied on each other. Like the characters in Antonio Prohías’ Spy vs. Spy cartoon strip, each side continually sought new ways to find out what the other side was up to. The listening post on the Teufelsberg in Berlin is an example of this. … Continue reading Radio Killer
The Persons Involved
The Persons Involved (Die Beteiligten) came out in June, 1989, and was the last Kriminalfilm DEFA released prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is based on an actual crime that occurred back in the early sixties. The film follows the story of two police inspectors investigating the drowning death of a young … Continue reading The Persons Involved
Track in the Night
In America, we tend to parse out films about crime into specific categories, such as heist films, detective films, film noir, mysteries, and so on. In both East and West Germany, these films are lumped into one big group: Kriminalfilme, or “crime films,” usually referred to as “Krimis.” Many West German Krimis center around a … Continue reading Track in the Night
No Proof for Murder
No Proof for Murder (Für Mord kein Beweis) belongs to the film genre that Germans (East and West) call Krimis. We’d call them “crime films,” although we never do, preferring instead to parse things out as film noir, mysteries, and thrillers. No Proof for Murder is a good example of the East German style of … Continue reading No Proof for Murder
Bellboy Ed Martin
Although Bellboy Ed Martin (Hotelboy Ed Martin) is considered a minor film in the DEFA catalog, there is no other DEFA film with quite as interesting a back story. It stretches from the great depression to the McCarthy era, with all sorts of intrigue and tragedy along the way. It comes with a script that … Continue reading Bellboy Ed Martin
Rendezvous Aimée
In the mid-fifties, things were getting awfully messy in Berlin. With a border that porous, and two politico-economic structures so out of sync with each other, it was inevitable that all sorts of shenanigans would occur, usually to the detriment of East Germany. Goods purchased in East Germany, where the state was subsidizing some of … Continue reading Rendezvous Aimée
Alarm at the Circus
In 1954, a young director named Gerhard Klein teamed up with an even younger screenwriter named Wolfgang Kohlhaase, and the world of East German cinema would never be the same. The duo would go on do several films together over the years, but Alarm at the Circus (Alarm im Zirkus) was their first. At a … Continue reading Alarm at the Circus
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is an adaptation of Georg Büchner’s play, Woyzeck. The play has been performed on stage since 1913. It was the basis for Alban Berg’s popular 1922 opera and Manfred Gurlitt’s less popular one from a few years later. The Nazis banned both of these operas, but not the play. Gurlitt went on to make … Continue reading Wozzeck
Anton the Magician
Of all the surprises that East German films bring to American viewers, the biggest one—excluding the psychedelia of In the Dust of the Stars, which is guaranteed to make anyone’s head explode—is how dark the humor in their comedies can be. Of course, the target for this kind of comedy is nearly always western-style capitalism … Continue reading Anton the Magician
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