Die Mörder sind unter uns

Immediately after WWII, Italy and Japan developed strong national cinemas. The same thing didn't happen in Germany. I really didn't know they made any films in the aftermath, but apparently they did. The Murderers Are Among us was made just the year after Germany lost the war. It's quite a strong film, feeling a lot like the film noir style that was all the rage in America at the time (which, in turn, was heavily influenced by German silent cinema). Ernst Wilhelm Borchert plays an alcoholic doctor who is haunted by his participation in the war. He hooks up with his new roommate (Hildegard Knef), which helps him a little, but then he runs into his former commanding officer (Arno Paulsen), which sends him into an angry, murderous downward spiral. The film is actually thinly veiled propaganda, expressing that not all Germans (be they soldiers or civilians) were okay with wiping out entire Polish villages or, you know, the Jews. Eh, maybe I can accept that, but, taking the film as some kind of apology, it all feels a tad too little too late. I do, however, like the appeal for peace and justice, as opposed to revenge. The last thing the world needed at the time was more violence. The filmmaking is very beautiful. Sometimes it feels like a dry run for The Third Man. I don't know if Carol Reed saw this film, but one filmmaker who most certainly did was Lars von Trier. His film Europa cribs from this one pretty liberally at times, most notably the image of a snowfall in a bombed-out church.

The opening scene conveys the film's mood. A low-angle camera shot shows bombed-out buildings, rubble in the street, an abandoned war tank, a makeshift wooden cross stuck in the ground, and a middle age man walking alone toward the camera, as three children play amid the ruins. There's no dialogue, just jazzy, bouncy, upbeat piano music that contrasts sharply with the bleak B&W image.

Set in Berlin in 1945, the film tells the fictional story of a former surgeon, the man in the opening scene, whose name is Dr. Mertens (Ernst Borchert). He's dispirited and cynical. He meets up with a young woman, played by Hildegard Knef. The two of them share an uninviting apartment, severely damaged in the recently ended war. Knef's character is attracted to the dejected surgeon. But he's too disheartened to care. The deaths of thousands of people in a war render a surgeon's job of saving one life rather meaningless, according to Dr. Mertens. As the plot moves along, he reunites with an older, prosperous industrialist, a man whose attitude about the war is curiously indifferent.

All of the film's photography was done in Berlin, right after the war. The destroyed buildings and brick rubble are a big part of the story, symbolic of human devastation. B&W, expressionistic cinematography is terrific, with stark shadows amid the ruins, human silhouettes against bleak, cracked walls.

Interiors remind me of those in "The Blue Angel" (1930), dilapidated, dirty, cheap, drab, and very depressing. In "The Murderers Are Among Us", background music is minimal. Most scenes lack music, and the story is more potent for it. Sound effects consist of squeaky doors, footsteps on wooden floors, and other realistic sounds. The film's casting and acting are fine.

Historically significant as the first German film made in Germany following the end of WWII, "The Murderers Are Among Us" reminds us of the horrors of war. One scene near the end is unforgettable in its severity. Outside at night, with snow gently falling, arc lights create ghostly shadows. The surgeon stands alone amid the rubble, outside a damaged church where people inside are singing "Silent Night". Faces of the people are grim. What a bleak period in human history.

Unit 5 film discussion Matt Butcher The Murderers Are Among Us is a film made immediately after World War II in East Germany. The melancholy of the film is derived from its main characters, a female concentration camp survivor who returns to her old apartment to find it occupied by an ex-military doctor. This military doctor drives the main conflict of the film in that his conscience is slowly eating away at him for his apparent actions during the war.

In this regard, the film acts as a conscience for the people of East Germany, slowly asking themselves about their past and how they are going to live with it. It was a tumultuous period of reconciliation that the Germans were trying to live through. This movie tries to act on those feelings.

Silberman notes that another film of this time, Rotation, "constructs a narration based on identification and emotional catharsis rather than on the cognitive terms of epic distanciation." The Murderers Are Among Us also tries to wipe the slate clean. It comes out and admits that what happened was wrong, hence the horrible feelings that the doctor is going through. They cannot completely distance themselves from these previous events, these earth-shattering events, unless they work through these feelings.

Murderers Among Us is the first film made, of a vast trove of films, in the Soviet controlled sector of post-war Germany that was to become East Germany. It is deeply and masterfully immersed in the aesthetic traditions of German Expressionism and /or Film Noir: unusual angles and picture planes, extreme lighting effects, twisted stairs, bombed-out buildings that look like jagged fingers against the sky (it was shot in the ruins of Berlin), a haunted, tormented protagonist, stark black and white atmosphere, and, above all, shadows. Shadows and more shadows of every size, shape, and density. In fact this film could serve as a text book on shadow craft: the scene where a man is screaming from within the vast shadow of a pistol wielding attacker is magnificent. I haven't seen The Third Man recently but I am sure Murderers influenced it profoundly. I would recommend the Third Man as a good double feature with this film.

Murders belongs to a genre called 'rubble films', shot in the rubble of Germany and frequently dealing with issues of German guilt after WW II. Murderers does not seek to deal overmuch with the people who gave the orders, but with the many Germans who followed them with little or no protest. Such as the wounded doctor in this film who stood by while even children were executed as reprisals against resistance fighters in occupied Poland. Plotwise the film works quite nicely, and I liked the atmosphere of renewal, and perhaps relief at the end of a nightmare, amongst all that ruin and rubble as the German people began to pick themselves up.

"The murderers are among us" is a remarkable and ground breaking film: the first German film made after the war. Just for this it deserves wider recognition.

Filmed in the actual ruins of Berlin in 1945/46, this film tells many stories on many levels. Excellent black & white imagery and camera work which really captures the mood and setting.

There is emotional, psychological and physical devastation here. Everything and everyone is ruined, the future wiped away replaced only by recent horrors and appalling choices. "War forces us to choose between greater or lesser evils..."

Hildegard Knef (Suzanne) is beautiful and restrained. She wants a "normal life", whatever that is, in post-apocalyptic Berlin, and will fashion it from what comes to hand. Her past, in a concentration camp, is so bad, that it is not mentioned by her or the film makers, only hinted at. Wilhelm Borchert (Dr Hans Mertens) has also returned from war. He is hopelessly damaged... No spoilers.

Although acted expertly, Knef's story doesn't quite hold up, hence the 7 and not higher. But otherwise this film is limited only by the circumstances and zero resources.

A very interesting and worthwhile film. Watch The Murderers Are Among Us and see what you think. T.