West German crime thriller with Hardy Krüger and Elisabeth Müller
On May 22, 1958, this exciting CCC production by veteran director Josef von Baky celebrated its premiere in Hamburg's UFA-Palast. The film was distributed by Europa Film and sold 2.869 million tickets (source: InsideKino).
The recently deceased global star Hardy Krüger (1928-2022) plays a dashing hospital doctor somewhere in the Federal Republic province. Actually happy with his wife (Elisabeth Müller) and child, the philanderer also has something going on with the attractive nurse Gabriele (Eva Pflug, 1929-2008). When she is attacked and murdered on the way home by an as yet unrecognized serial perpetrator, the all too smart Dr. Korda under suspicion. Especially since the whole world, right up to the head doctor (Rudolf Fernau), is already informed about his crazy life. Of course, only the wife was not in the know. For Beate Korda, a world collapses. In addition, she comes under additional pressure when the public judges her fallen husband all too quickly. Elisabeth Müller (1926-2006), who was still employed at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen in the early 1950s, plays this woman who slowly breaks under pressure brilliantly. In court, her husband (GOLDEN GLOBE nominee Hardy Krüger doesn't seem as impressive as usual in the prison scenes) is urgently dependent on the help of his defense lawyer (Hans Nielsen)...
Small, fine crime thriller pearl from the Federal Republic film industry, which offers a reunion with many stars of the past. The later "DER ALTE / The Old One" star Siegfried Lowitz (1914-1999) is allowed to play an inspector here. By the way, Lowitz was a theater colleague of Elisabeth Müller's in Göttingen. We see Reinhard Kolldehoff (1914-1995) as the inspector's assistant, who was to be thoroughly beaten by Bud Spencer a decade and a half later. Of course, people in the German provinces of the 1950s weren't that far along yet. Lucie Mannheim embodies the unlucky couple's brilliant housekeeper, and the very young Monika Peitsch, who 30 years later would become the star of the ZDF television series "DAS ERBE DER GULDENBURGS / The Guldenburgs' Legacy", can be seen as another nurse.
The exterior shots of the film, which is well worth seeing, were shot in beautiful Goslar am Harz. This is not explicitly mentioned, but it is clearly visible in the forest scenes, the Goslar town hall and the mountainous-looking street.
