Die Halbstarken

Most of German and Austrian mainstream cinema of the fifties was light musical comedy, sentimental drama or "Heimatfilm" (escapist love stories, set on the countryside - the Alps, Black Forest or Lüneburger Heide - glorifying natural environment, folklore and the "virtues" of the plain and simple country folk). There was hardly a realistic view of (West-)German society during the years of the "Economic Miracle". Young author Will Tremper did not like that sentimental stuff. Obviously influenced by Hollywood teen dramas ("The Wild One", "The Blackboard Jungle", "Rebel Without a Cause") he and director Georg Tressler in 1956 realized Germany's first look on juvenile delinquency, a film that is now regarded a classic of German post-war cinema. This one is hard, raw and realistic, omitting any false sentimentality or romanticism. Out of all German film made in the fifties it is my personal number one! The cast is fantastic, above all the lead triangle: Horst Buchholz as Freddy the leader of the pack, barely 16-year-old Karin Baal as "Sissy", a teenage "femme fatale" (Don't mind her name, she has absolutely nothing in common with the Romy Schneider character!) and Christian Doermer as Freddy's ambivalent younger brother Jan. The rest of the gang are roughly characterized and do a great job as well. Paul Wagner and Viktoria von Ballasko as Freddy's and Jan's parents as well as Stanislaw Ledinek as the Italian running an ice-cream parlor also give great performances. The storyline is as follows - In an indoor swimming pool Jan meets his brother Freddy who had moved out after a quarrel with his father, an embittered tyrant. Jan knows that his parents need 3,000 Deutschmarks (quite a lot in those days) to pay their debts. Jan asks Freddy who pretends to have a good job if he could help them. Freddy says yes, while preparing a mail car robbery that would not only allow him to help his parents but to fulfill his dream - buying a Buick Cabriolet. Jan, who seems to smell something fishy, nevertheless accompanies his brother... No spoilers, but young Baal has a great scene as the "bad girl". The film was shot on location in West Berlin and has nearly everything you are longing for - dark alleys, petticoats, leather jackets, American cars, dances, sex and crime. The only thing missing is Rock 'n' Roll. The jukebox only plays conventional jazz music. But all in all this is of minor importance. In 1957 "Die Halbstarken" could be seen - in a dubbed version, titled "Teenage Wolfpack" - in Britain and the US as well. After "Die Halbstarken" Tressler made many films and TV productions until the 1990s. Tremper continued as a screenwriter and director of nonconformist films. He passed away in 1998. While Buchholz became an international Star and died in 2003, Baal and Doermer have made their own careers in German Film and Television. They are still (2006) around and can frequently be seen on TV.

"Die Halbstarken" ("Teenage Wolfpack") is a German film that was dubbed long ago for foreign sales. And, if you watch, it's likely the only cast member you will recognize is Horst Buchholz...a few years before he became a famous international star.

Freddy (Buchholz) is a young sociopath who has little regard for others, lies incessantly and has a taste for violence. The film makes it clear that Freddy learned this sort of violence from his nasty father and through the course of the film, Freddy tries his best to turn his younger brother into a creep just like him. Additionally, Freddy has a pathological need to control his young friends and insist they join him in a life of crime. Eventually, naturally, this results in nasty consequences...not a career in politics (the other field in which budding sociopaths excel).

I noticed one reviewer compared this to "Rebel Without a Cause" and to me this is not a fair comparison. In "Rebel", James Dean's character and the rest WANT to fit in and be good but just don't fit. In "Teenage Wolfpack" the emphasis is on NOT fitting in and being evil....not a rowdy teen but evil. Because of this, the film lacks the depth of "Rebel", though it is enjoyable in a simple and less complicated way.

Is this a film you should rush out to see? No. It's reasonably well made but also a bit tedious after a while. I found myself just wanting to see Freddy get his just due and end it all.

This film is slightly redeemed by a decent ending, if you can stick around that long.

Horst Buchholz (billed as Henry Bookholt to fool us, which doesn't work) plays the leader of a gang, and for most of the film, they do nothing but terrorize the audience with tedium. Buchholz' girlfriend is played by Karin Baal, who is cute and is a fairly decent actress. She seems somewhat torn between Buchholz and his brother, but she is really playing them both. The plot, which is finally revealed after about an hour, involves Buchholz and his pals robbing a mail truck. They end up with squat, and everyone gets ticked off at Buchholz. In one final attempt to score, Buchholz leads his gang of losers to rob a house owned by one of the gang's bosses, a guy named Garezzo. The German guy playing Garezzo tosses out a few Italian words in an attempt to convince us he is really not a German guy playing an Italian guy.

The first six minutes of this film are very bizarre, as we see lots of teenage boys cavorting in and around an indoor swimming pool. Oh, there are a few girls as well, but the camera seems to linger on the very short and tight bathing trunks that the guys are wearing. The guys are all well-toned, with bulging quadriceps, hard abs, a hint of gluteus maxima, the pool water glistening like dew off their Adonis-like physiques ... oh, sorry, my mind just wandered for a moment.

The acting is acceptable, but it can't save this film. Buchholz actually shines in a few scenes, but that's only because the light is reflected off his leather pants.

'Die Halbstarken' don't have much in common with the theme and influence of the roughly contemporary James-Dean-Film 'Rebel without a cause', only that the main-persons of both films are attractive youths, who wear similar clothing. And: The Intention of this German film to handle the same Topic is recognizable.

But James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood play sensible youths, who run into an emotional crisis while in contact with their surroundings (so triggering the Youth-Revolution against narrow structures),while Horst Buchholz, Karin Baal and the others are merely youthful criminals, who could have appeared as well in films from, say, the 1930's.

James Dean in 'Rebel' may seem emotionally unstable, but he is never brutal, like Horst Buchholz in 'Die Halbstarken' (who, above all, acts very dumb). It looks to me, in comparison, as if Nicholas Ray, director of 'Rebel', wanted to describe an emotional situation and a thereby starting Rebellion, while 'Die Halbstarken' wanted to warn against this Rebellion, according to the opinions of the grown-ups of that time. The German film wanted to demonstrate an immaturity and malignity of the so-called 'Halbstarken', and so seems to be a moralizing anti-youth-rebel-story, and therefore wholly different from 'Rebel without a cause'.