- Murderers Among Us
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The Murderers Are Among Us (UK)
Murderers Among Us (US)
Die Mörder sind unter uns (Germany)
British movie posterDirected by Wolfgang Staudte Produced by Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft Written by Wolfgang Staudte Starring Ernst Wilhelm Borchert
Hildegard Knef
Arno Paulsen
Erna SellmerMusic by Ernst Roters Cinematography Friedl Behn-Grund
Eugen KlagemannEditing by Hans Heinrich Release date(s) 1946 Running time 91 minutes Country Germany Language German Die Mörder sind unter uns German title (English titles - Murderers Among Us in the United States;The Murderers Are Among Us in the United Kingdom) was one of the first post-World War II German film[1] and the first Trümmerfilm. It was produced in 1945 and 1946 in the Althoff-Atelier in Babelsberg and in Jofa-Ateliers in Johannisthal. It was written and directed by Wolfgang Staudte.
Contents
Plot
Berlin in 1945 after Germany's defeat in the war. The former military surgeon Dr. Hans Mertens (Ernst Wilhelm Borchert) returns home from the battlefield to find his home destroyed. He suffers from the terrible memories of the war and becomes an alcoholic. A photographer and Nazi concentration camp survivor, Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef), finds him living in her apartment as she returns home and they soon become friends and roommates. Eventually, Mertens meets his former captain Ferdinand Brückner (Arno Paulsen), who had been responsible for the shooting of 36 men, 54 women, and 31 children on Christmas Eve of 1942 in a Polish village on the Eastern Front. He is now a successful businessman, producing pots out of old Stahlhelme, the German military steel helmet. On Christmas Eve, Mertens tries to kill him, but Wallner stops him at the last minute. She convinces Mertens to have Brückner put on trial, and the two start a new life together.
Filming
The film was shot in the ruins of Berlin. Originally the film was supposed to be named Der Mann den ich töten werde (The Man I will kill) and Mertens was supposed to succeed in killing Brückner, but the script and the title were changed because the Soviets were afraid that viewers could interpret that as a call for vigilante justice.
Murderers Among Us debuted on October 15, 1946 in the Admiralspalast, which was at the time the home of the Berlin State Opera, in the Soviet sector. The television debut in the German Democratic Republic was on November 1, 1955 and in the Federal Republic on November 18, 1971.
Reception
Most of the reviews were positive, although some criticized the fact that the characters appeared in modern and trendy clothes, which did not reflect the reality of the living conditions of Berliners in the immediate post-war period. In this film, Staudte was not only dealing with Germany's past, but also with his own, as he had been involved in the filming of the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß.
References
- ^ Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity After Hitler, Heide Fehrenbach, 1995, University of North Carolina Press, ISBN 0807845124
- The Murderer are among us in progress-film.de, the distributor of the complete DEFA film heritage
- Die Mörder sind unter uns, 1946 in filmref.com. Retrieved 2007-01-19.
- Murderers Are Among Us, The (Moerder sind unter uns, Die) in German-films.de. Retrieved 2007-01-19.
- This article incorporates information from the revision as of January 19, 2007 of the equivalent article on the German Wikipedia.
External links
Categories:- 1946 films
- Films set in Germany
- Films set in Berlin
- German films
- Black-and-white films
- 1940s drama films
- Films directed by Wolfgang Staudte
- East German films
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