Sunday May 15th 2016, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema:
THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US 1946
(Die mörder sind unter uns)
Directed by Wolfgang Staudte
81 minutes
In German with English subtitles
Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm. Free admission.
With a style that is a fusion of deep expressionism mixed with harsh documentary, this rare movie captures the mood of a demoralized Berlin directly after the Second World War. We enter a city of devastation, of decimated streets and broken lives. But imagine the feelings of the main character Susanne when she returns to her home city after having been released from a concentration camp. When she returns to her wrecked apartment, she finds a stranger living there. Both of them are lost souls. They strike up a friendship… but as she goes through the streets she realizes she is in a city of people that betrayed her. Who is who? Who are the innocent survivors, and who are the villains?
This unusual movie was made directly after the end of the war, and therefore captures the ideas and sensibilities of that bitter time better than any film made today which looks back with contemporary prejudices. All of the film’s photography was done in the real streets of Berlin, and the main characters roam the desolate streets of rubble. And this thriller is also interesting to compare to the upcoming film noir movement… all of the elements are there – the sharp shadows, human silhouettes against cracked walls, unusual angles, spiral staircases, haunted tormented individuals wandering through a jagged broken landscape. There is a mood of dark melancholy hanging in the air of this sombre movie as Suzanne tries to find a way to forgive her city for the atrocities she has endured. […Lees verder]
