After graduating from medical school, a young doctor crosses paths with West German spies in this dark spy/crime film from the early sixties. Right after the Wall was built, politicians were anxious to demonstrate that the Wall would have no effect on creative freedom, and that, if anything, it would protect the average person from …
Category: Krimi
The Break-In
This DEFA/West German coproduction about a daring bank robber was a huge hit on both side of the German border. It’s based on an actual bank robbery that took place in Berlin in 1951. In November of 1951, a man named Walter Pannewitz rented office spaces on the ground floor of the Römischer Hof, a …
Murder on Monday
Germany has given the world plenty of great films and filmmakers, but their greatest contribution to genre cinema is the Krimifilm. Literally, this just means crime film, but the Krimi is much more than that. A good Krimi has a style and structure that started in the silent era, and can still be seen in …
What Should I Watch?
New to East German films? Here are a few from DEFA with English subtitles that are well worth seeing. All of these films are currently available on the Kanopy streaming service. I’m often asked for recommendations on East German movies that people should watch. There’s no one answer to this. I once showed my personal …
Pension Boulanka
A murder has been committed at the Pension Boulanka, but there are too many suspects. Here's a classic example of a German Krimi, East German-style. A few years back, I was talking to the “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller. Eddie is the man behind the Noir City, a film noir festival held every year at …
Interrogating the Witnesses
At first, Interrogating the Witnesses (Vernehmung der Zeugen) looks like it’s going to be a murder mystery or a police procedural. A boy named Rainer (Mario Gericke) has been stabbed to death, and the doctor investigating the scene believes her son Max (René Steinke) is the killer. It turns out she’s right, and the rest …
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. …
The Persons Involved
The Persons Involved (Die Beteiligten) was released in June 1989. It was the last Kriminalfilm (Krimi) released by DEFA before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's 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 …
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 …
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 films noir, mysteries, and thrillers. No Proof for Murder is a good example of the East German style of …
East German Cinema Blog 