Nachts wenn der Teufel kam

"Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" is a film from the second German period of Robert Siodmak. Leaving Germany with the rise of Nazism in 1933 he returned to his home country after the Second World War in 1952. In the USA his film career suffered from his image of being a film noir director, in Germany this same image was more of a blessing. Also "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" is a good example of the film noir genre.

In German films the serial killer is portrayed in a different way than in for example American films. In American films he is portrayed as a savage beast who likes to kill. In German films the serial killer is both perpetrator and victim. He is a psychopat who has to kill. This is most clearly in "M" (1931, Fritz Lang), but is also the case in "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" (1957) and "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" (1958, Ladislao Vajda). Most convincing in his role as psychpat remains however Peter Lorre in his role as Hans Beckert in "M". In "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" Mario Adorf as Bruno Luedke can not match that performance, and he is hardly te blame for that.

In "M" the serial killer is hunted down by organised crime (who wants to keep the level of police activity at a low level). In "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" there is also some sort of organised crime, namely state crime in the form of the Nazi government. They are however not interested in the real killer, whose identity is uncovered by an honest detective. For reasons of public relations they prefer to give a death sentence to an innocent man, thereby showing their contempt for the value of a human live.

"Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" takes place in 1944, at the end of the war. A great deal of the film is devoted to the (miserable) life of German citizens. In this way there are similarities with films such as "Germania anno zero" (1948, Roberto Rossellini) or "Der Untergang" (2004, Oliver Hirschbiegel).

I watched The Devil Strikes at Night after browsing Son of Dracula director Robert Siodmak's IMDB credits and reading the film's extremely interesting synopsis.

Disillusioned German detective Axel Kersten investigates the identity of a serial killer who possesses the incredible strength of shattering the tiny u-shaped throat bone in his roughly 80 female victims.

Axel initially finds the full support of the Nazis, until the findings of his investigation threaten public perception of Hitler's SS. What could have been a more straightforward movie about a serial killer during Nazi Germany turns into a story about how quickly the lines of culpability can become blurred in such a bleak place as Germany towards the end of World War II. It's a great movie with excellent performances that really holds your attention for its two-hour runtime of reading subtitles.

It blew my mind to learn after watching The Devil Strikes at Night that it's story was loosely based on real-life serial killer Bruno Lüdke who shares his name with the character in the film.

Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam is directed by Robert Siodmak and written by Will Berthold (article) and Werner Jörg Lüddecke. It stars Claus Holm, Annemarie Düringer, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Carl Lange and Werner Peters. Music is by Siegfried Franz and cinematography by Georg Krause.

A serial killer is terrorising Hamburg, Germany, during World War II. When the local police struggle to catch him, the Gestapo are brought in to crack the case.

The basis for the story is that of real life serial killer Bruno Lüdke, here played by Adorf. Yet this is only a side-bar to the actuality of Siodmak's film, for it's a clinical deconstruction of Nazi Germany at the time, a look at the final throes of that regime. It shows how the corrupt powers would do anything to not make their government look bad, with orders even coming from Adolf himself! It's all very fascinating and potent, and well performed. There's some nice visual touches via the night sequences, though you reasonably expect to have more from Siodmak, a fine purveyor of expressionism and noir chiaroscuro. There's some contrivances and a couple of badly staged action sequences, but this remains a tough political drama with mystery shadings. 8/10

There's nothing as intense and disturbing as German-produced serial killer films, especially when they are inspired by raw, macabre factual cases, like "M" (Peter Kürten), "The Tenderness of Wolves" (Fritz Haarmann) and "Angst" (Werner Kniesek). Okay, admittedly, that last one is 100% Austrian, but also and truly one of the most harrowingly realistic thrillers ever made. "The Devil Strikes at Night" is another masterpiece that fits into this category, as it's based on serial murderer Bruno Lüdke and very accurately depicts the period and the circumstances of his arrest in Berlin during the summer of 1944. Mario Adorf, still in one of the earliest roles of his rich career, impressively portrays the strong and potent but mentally disabled Lüdke. He breaks through the cork of a wine bottle with the tip of one finger, but he also occasionally feels the incontrollable urge to strangle young women, like the Hamburg waitress Lucy Hansen. Her lover, Willi Keun, is wrongfully arrested for the murder and sentenced to death, but you don't really care since he's a Nazi commander and a sleazy pervert. Commissioner Axel Kersten, however, does believe in justice and connects the murder to several ones that took place before the war. He unmasks Lüdke, but this isn't good news for SS-Gruppenfuhrer Rossdorf because he doesn't like the idea of a handicapped Aryan being able to remain below the radar in their superior Third Reich. Master director Robert Siodmak ("The Spiral Staircase") returns to Germany to portray his native country how it really was during World War II: corrupt, ugly, hypocrite and completely devoid of honest and honorable men! It's not a very exciting or action-packed thriller, but it's hugely atmospheric, depressing and wonderfully shot by Georg Krause. My inner horror fanatic is somewhat disappointed that a killer suspected of 51 murders is only seen strangling one victim, but Siodmak opted to put all his energy into the drawing of Lüdke as an atypical serial murderer and the slow but certain extirpation of Nazism.

Following an 11-year Hollywood stint, during which he mainly excelled in film noirs, German director Siodmak returned to his native country – where his promising initial career had previously been cut short by the rise of Nazism. Arguably the best-known of his latter-day efforts, the film under review deals in part with this particular 20th Century scourge and was distinguished by its receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film; prior to this, Siodmak had only been personally short-listed in a Best Direction nod for the seminal noir THE KILLERS (1946).

Anyway, while this revolved around a definitely intriguing premise – in the midst of WWII, a chase is on by the Police and Secret Service for a serial killer of women – I could not help feel somewhat let down by the end result. Siodmak's apprenticeship at the tail-end of the German Expressionist movement serves him in good stead with respect to the film's shadowy visuals; that said, a social commentary was clearly intended a' la Fritz Lang's M (1931; this greatest of all serial killer films, also emanating from Germany, is the obvious model here) – but, apart from its occasional jabs at the Third Reich, the impact is curiously muted. As with Lang's masterpiece, the murderer's identity is immediately revealed to us (he is well played by future "Euro-Cult" regular Mario Adorf) – his activities being also similarly counterpointed by the authorities' attempts to capture him.

The film, in fact, falters where Lang's found its greatest inspiration: there is no diatribe here by the culprit as to his helplessness in committing these heinous acts against others who did wrong out of choice. Rather, Adorf plays up his character's mental deficiency in his defense, and – disappointingly – no relation is really made between an individual (i.e. minor) crime spree and the genocide being perpetrated in the name of racial superiority by the German people! Indeed, the Nazis initially take this opportunity to target even imperfect Aryan specimen – but after the crippled policeman on the case 'raises a stink' (his thoroughness is demonstrated by the tearing up of newly-installed wallpaper at an apartment in order to verify an old journal's reportage of the murders) when a philandering German official accused of slaying one of Adorf's victims is sentenced to death, the Third Reich retracts the whole incident (though the killer is still executed) and the cop transferred to the war front!

While THE DEVIL STRIKES AT NIGHT is relentlessly grim and talky, it has its fair share of interesting sequences and performances: the early (and bafflingly) solitary murder sequence during an air raid; Adorf offering an incriminating handbag to his current crush and being reluctantly convinced to hand it over to the local authorities; the defiant Adorf proudly and bemusedly leading a posse of investigators to the spot in the country where he buried one of the 55 (or 80, depending on which source to believe) bodies he disposed of; the crippled investigator calling on the SS officer (Hannes Messemer) who commissioned him during a debauched party at his mansion and the confrontation which ensues; the train station finale in which the now-enlisted investigator denies the very existence of the Mario Adorf character to the above-mentioned girl the latter fancied, etc. Ultimately, the film would make a fine companion piece to Anatole Litvak's star-studded, big-budget Hollywood epic THE NIGHT OF THE GENERALS (1967) which equally deals with an outbreak of serial killings during WWII.