Polizeibericht Überfall

Though Ernö Metzner's 'Assault (1928)' was first introduced to me as a work of avant-garde cinema, it's actually quite mainstream, if a little dark thematically. A suspenseful, and occasionally humorous, morality play, the film follows the fortunes of an unscrupulous opportunist who happens upon a counterfeit coin, knowingly tries to capitalise on his discovery, and later regrets ever laying his eyes on it. In 1928, the film was apparently banned by the Germans censors owing to its "brutalising and demoralising effect," and they weren't kidding; there's not a single sympathetic character, and even our ill-treated protagonist had it all coming to him. Metzner keeps the story's pacing brisk, never allowing the tension to let up once it gets going, and excellent use is made of the Soviet montage style. Unlike in Dimitri Kirsanoff's 'Ménilmontant (1926),' a French avant-garde short film that I recently watched for the first time, the quick-fire editing is not overused to the point of nausea, and so the images flow freely and accessibly, such that the editing itself practically goes unnoticed.

'Assault' opens by introducing the notion of the cursed counterfeit coin. A passerby, stooping in the middle of the road to retrieve the currency, is struck down by an automobile, the coin spilling out of the victim's hand and coming to rest in the gutter. Metzer produced his film during a period of German history that was plagued with economic difficulties. Doomed to recession by the Treaty of Versailles, and having suffered massive hyperinflation from 1921-1923, Germany (and the rest of the world) now sat at the cusp of the Great Depression, and times were tough. Ordinary citizens would be willing to cheat, maim and kill even for a counterfeit coin, and such desperation had, at least in the director's view, brought down the nation's ethical standards. 'Assault' is a grotesque and sardonic exploration of the lengths to which Germany has stooped in difficult times – sometimes funny, sometimes scary – suggesting the corrupting influence of money (amplified even further by the fact that this money, being counterfeit, is itself corrupt).

This film is one of many short films from a DVD collection from Kino Video about silent Avant Garde films. Because of this, the films are extremely artistic but make no attempt to be commercially viable or interesting to the average person. Instead, since they are "art", the films are often confusing and apparently pointless--since this IS the point of the Avant Garde movement! However, of all the many films in this collection, this is probably the most "normal" and approachable film for the common person.

The short film is about a sleazy sort of bald, skinny guy who is trying to con people out of money--passing off a counterfeit coin. However, once he amasses a tidy sum of money, other "rifraff" do their best to steal it away from him. It's all a very strange little morality play that also has a point to make about how far the German people had fallen during the poverty years of the Weimar Republic. Interesting, with some unusual camera-work and images, but probably not a film for most audiences.

If you ARE looking for an "artsy" film but find this type of film I described sounds too unusual or esoteric, maybe you should try the films of the great French artist/director Jean Cocteau. Other than his BLOOD OF A POET, his other films combine artistry and Avant Garde imagery with well-constructed plots and familiar movie elements. My favorites of his films are Orphée (Orpheus) and La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast).

A slice-of-life vignette about life in poverty stricken Weimar- era Germany. A man wins some cash in a dice game in a low grade beer hall. He in pursued by a thug through the streets of Berlin, and escapes into the arms of a prostitute, only to find himself narrowly avoiding being murdered by her pimp. Once back out on the street he falls victim to the thug. The film makes extraordinary use of bizarre camera angles, fast Russian-style editing and contains a dream sequence which is distorted through use of mirrors and refracting lenses.

The German short "Accident," a.k.a. "Uberfall" or "Assault," is a Emo Metzner-directed 20-minute short that follows a man who picks up a counterfeit coin he spots lying in a roadside gutter. The viewer instantly knows this coin is bad luck since the previous man who had scooped it up had just died hit by a car. With the coin, its new owner wins at dice and leaves the premise with a handful of money. An observer who sees him pocket the money follows him. The coin holder is shanghaied by an aggressive hooker, who leads him into her den with her pimp there acting as an enforcer. Things get sticky for the owner of the coin as the pimp wants to roll him, forcing the man to defend himself both from the thug inside as well as the waiting bandit outside the door.

"Accident" was the most important work for its director, Emo Metzner. As a production set designer for Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Ernst Lubitsch, Robert Wiene and other European directors for many years, Metzner copied Pabst's artistic style. "Accident" is noted for its realistic, bleak examination of street life in Germany during the 1920s, placing the short film into the category of the 'New Objective' movement identified with Pabst. So dour but convincingly graphic was the portrayal of German street life in the economically-depressed country seen in "Accident," German film censors banned Metzner's movie from public showings in 1928, claiming it had a "brutalizing and demoralizing effect."

Metzner eventually relocated to England when Adolf Hitler took over the German government in the early 1930s. He continued to ply his art and set design skills for a number of United Kingdom film studios well into the late 1940s.

A German citizen happens upon a counterfeit coin lying in a gutter. The opening sequence of the movie gives a brief glimpse into the notion that the coin might be "cursed," as another passerby is struck down by a car while reaching for the coin in the middle of the road. Although the finder of the coin is at first glad, he soon regrets ever having picked it up.

IMDb gives the title as "Accident", whereas the more literal translation would be "Police Report: Assault", which I think takes on a very different tone. Kino splits the difference and just calls it "Uberfall". None of these really sums it up, but whatever.

Writer-director Ernő Metzner is probably better known as a production designer, and unfortunately he is not well known at all. He was forced into exile around 1933 and his career went downhill from there. This film is, in my opinion, one of the strongest of Kino's collection, and has that same shady crime element as such bigger films as "M". Metzner could have been a noir pioneer.