Terrível Armada

I was 10 years old when the 1964 version of Emil and the Detectives came out. I loved that movie. I even had a recording of the soundtrack that I played over and over again when I was alone.

Then, just last night, I happened to catch an interview with Billy Wilder on television. It mentioned his early work on an "Emil and the Detectives". Today I sit astounded that there is not just one other earlier version of the film, but three earlier adaptations and one newer one (that I have found out about).

I like to think that I am a minor film buff, but this discovery that this film exists goes to show that the vast treasure of film worldwide is to be saved and cherished.

I can hardly wait in the coming years to try and see all of the versions and compare the great and heartwarming story.

After the children's book "Emil und die Detektive" was published in 1928 this first screen version was made in 1931 under the supervision of the author Erich Kästner himself.

The story seems simple: young Emil gets to visit his granny in Berlin and is given 140 marks by his mother for his grandma. On the train to Berlin the 140 marks are stolen by a man with a stiff hat while Emil sleeps. Arriving in Berlin he tries to follow the thief and receives help from a well organized and nice "gang" of Berlin street "detectives" in his age. A happy end seems possible.

While the movie contains a very entertaining story itself, an even more interesting detail of this movie is in its backdrop: an authentic Berlin of 1931 with open cabs, cars driving next to coaches, wide streets with lots of space for cyclists and so on. I always wondered when viewing older city maps what street life was like in the twenties of the last century when the streets were not as crowded as today, when the speed difference between pedestrians, cyclists, cars and coaches was still comparable in human measures.

The camera work, special effects (Emils dream on the train) and movie music are distinctly thirty-ish which made this movie even more interesting to me. All in all a very enjoyable movie for kids and adults alike.

This is a children's movie with a tragic backstory. Only one of the seven boys with named characters survived WWII. The other six died in combat.

...which isn't a wonder since this movie was directed by billy wilder. compared with the newest clone of this from 2001, it is quite simple to see, that one very important point for understanding the story is that it takes place in the 1920s/1930s when the story was written. the 2001 version takes place now, which makes it boring. it just looks like a copy. so go and get a hand at this masterpiece.

Emil from Neustadt travels to Berlin to visit his grandmother; he takes 140 Mark with him which his mother is sending. On the train, the money is stolen by another passenger. In Berlin, Emil pursues the thief and meets a gang of boys of his own age who help him. Eventually they recover the money; the thief - who turns out to be a bank robber to whom the police had been wanting to talk in any case - is arrested, and Emil gets a big reward.

The quality of the video I watched was awful: jerky, and the sound was so poor that the English subtitles were a real help. If this film has not yet been carefully restored, it ought to be. It is great. The child actors are wonderfully lively and natural, and Fritz Rasp gives a delightfully sinister performance as the thief. Inga Landgut is great as Emil's cousin Pony Hütchen (a nickname that refers to her funny little hat). The dialogues are equally good. You might think that children addressing each other as 'meine Herren' ('gentlemen') would sound unnatural, but they don't. That is evidently how children were talking c. 1930.

And that takes me to another great aspect of 'Emil und die Detektive': You get a glimpse of Germany in the brief period between the wars when conditions were more or less 'normal' by the standards of Western Europe and the US. That does not mean that there was no hardship. Emil's mother is clearly struggling as a hairdresser, and the 140 Mark she sends to his grandmother are probably about as much as she would make in a month. What I mean is normal in the sense that the militarism of imperial Germany had abated (even the constabler in Neustadt is reasonably friendly, despite his pre-WWI appearance) while marching hordes of brown shirts were not yet in evidence. When the film came out that was already about to change. Nine years later the actor playing Emil (Rolf Wenkhaus) would join the Luftwaffe; he was killed in action off the coast of Ireland in 1942. Most others did not survive the war either.