Les SS frappent la nuit

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

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.

Nachts,wenn der Teufel kam has realistically shown perversion of justice as a convincing argument against nazis.Robert Siodmak has convincingly outlined the historical background to examine one of the most ghastly episodes in German history.He elucidates how Nazi leadership made effectual use of crime,violence and totalitarianism in order to remain in power.Nachts,wenn der Teufel kam appears realistic as a result of nice all-round acting performances by Mario Adorf and Hannes Messemer.The film was a big commercial success as it won numerous prizes including the best direction award at Karlovy Vary.

There is a strange continuity in German movies: about every 20 years someone makes a film about a serial-killer. Apart from "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" (recently remade by Sean Penn) I'm thinking of the following works:

* M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)

* Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (1957)

* Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe (1973)

* Der Totmacher (1995)

While three of these films are more or less loosely based on the case of Fritz Haarmann who killed more than 24 young men in the 20s, "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam" is about Bruno Luebke who murdered several people in Hamburg during WWII (also a true case). In contrast to the picture that many American movies (e.g. "Hannibal") paint of a serial-killer as an evil being who kills for pleasure, these German movies show men who are helpless victims of their urge to kill, to which they succumb not when they want to, but when they 'have' to. Mario Adorf plays Bruno as such a man and his performance is of the same rank as Peter Lorre's in "M" or Götz George's in "Totmacher" IMO.

Even better is Hannes Messemer as an SS-Officer, who, for 'political' reasons, wants another man executed against better judgement. The main forte of the film however, is the depiction of everyday-life in the last years of the third Reich. In the scene where the ugly harvest helpers get their reward from a sweating hanger-on Robert Siodmak perfectly captured the moral corruption (thinly veiled by empty propaganda phrases) within Nazi-Germany. In view of mass-murder of an entirely different caliber (i.e. genocide), the question if the right man is sentenced for a killing series becomes secondary in the end.

Afterwards I'd watched this picture, on bonus material the Italian actor Mario Adorf spoke about his recollections concerning the productions that reveals some possible disagreement over the veracity of the case occurred on WWII during the Nazi period, starting this point almost majority of the facts really happened, aside some sequence added under the pretext of the dramatization without stir in the real events.

Then the plot took place at Germany in 1944 when the war is closing on behalf of the allied, when a Germany serial killer called Bruno Ludke (Adorf) has been committed many murders on different spots at country, when a former army officer took over as police commissioner Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) delves into the odd case suspecting that the man caught in crime scene couldn't commit a murder due he didn't fits as enough strong hands an unusual throttling applied by the real killer.

When he finally finds Bruno and arresting him to able to extract further strongest elements to ascertaining the truth, during the Bruno's stateman the whole staff of the local police they reach a bottom line that the killer murdered around 80 victims, in the meantime a Gestapo officer following the case carefully under other pretext, in a nutshell hush it up due the possible damage to Nazi party on so-called new Germany that now is in the hands of the Fuher.

The picture has many qualities enforced and approached by the esteemed director Robert Siodmak, also the Noir proposition, fine photograph and embellished by a sharpy dialogue between the Gestapo officer and the Commissaire Axel over the Arian progeny as pure German race, however paradoxically Bruno Ludke belong from this ethnic group!!

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First watch: 2022 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5.