Film Review
After an absence of 18 years, the actor Peter Lorre returned to his
native Germany, intending to begin a career as a film director.
Since leaving his country in 1933, he had become an international star,
appearing in around fifty films, including many Hollywood classics such
as
Casablanca (1942) and
Arsenic and Old Lace
(1944). For his 1951 directorial debut, Lorre could hardly have
chosen a more relevant subject - a film that probes deeply into the
German psyche and looks for some explanation for the madness that
overtook his fellow countrymen in the previous decade.
Unfortunately, this was just about the least attractive subject for a
contemporary German cinema audience; few German people
wanted to be reminded of the Nazi nightmare they had just lived through. The
film,
Der Verlorene, was a commercial
disaster for Lorre and put a definitive end to his filmmaking
ambitions. He returned to Hollywood to resume his acting career,
and his film was soon forgotten. It resurfaced in the
mid-1980s when it became available for release for the first time in
the United States, twenty years after Lorre's death.
Der Verlorene is a disturbing
yet strangely compelling film which, with its harsh lighting and stark
use of shadows and silhouettes, clearly owes much to the expressionist
films of the late 1920s, early 1930s. Lorre stars in the
film, playing a character which immediately calls to mind the child
killer he portrayed so brilliantly in Fritz Lang's
M
(1930), the role that brought him instant celebrity. The
intensely brooding mood of the film, the use of the extended flashback
and the moral ambiguity of its characters all show the influence of
American film noir, which itself stemmed from the German expressionist
tradition. Lorre not only stars in the film, turning in another fine performance, but
he also shows immense skill and originality in his direction. His
confined, minimalist approach
has a darkness and existential bleakness that is strangely reminiscent of
the films that Swedish director Ingmar Bergman would make later in the same decade. On
the strength of this film alone it is evident that Peter Lorre had the talent to
become one of the leading post-war filmmakers in Germany.
Perhaps more than any German film made at the time or since,
Der Verlorene comes closest to
unravelling the mystery of the Nazi enigma, shedding light on how it
was that ordinary human beings were driven to play an active part in
one of the most heinous regimes in human history. Dr Rothe, the
Jekyll and Hyde character played with chilling conviction by Lorre, is a
metaphor for the German people. A deeply rooted respect for order
and authority, coupled with a profound need for national identity,
allowed fascism to thrive, whilst man's baser qualities - a lust for
power and destruction - were the means by which the Nazi vision was to
be realised. Rothe is an ordinary, civilised man, until the day
he persuades himself that it his duty to kill another human being. After that he is,
literally, a changed man.
What the film shows is that there is no such thing as an absolute
morality. One's view of what is right and wrong is determined by
the prevailing circumstances. The inner conflict that drives
Lorre's character to the brink of insanity arises from this moral
confusion. He feels instinctively that he has done wrong by killing his
fiancée, but the world around him persuades him otherwise, and
he finds himself in a moral no man's land. When one's moral
compass is so badly broken, notions such as good and evil cease to have
any meaning, and killing becomes as easy as breathing...
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In the immediate aftermath of WWII, Dr Karl Neumeister works in a
refugee camp, immunising displaced people in the ruins of a defeated
Germany. Introverted and dedicated to his work, he is
perturbed when a man named Nowak is assigned to work alongside
him. It is not their first meeting. During the war,
Neumeister - then named Dr Rothe - was engaged on important research
into immunology. Nowak was his assistant, and a Gestapo
agent. When it was discovered that details of the research
had found their way to London, Nowak informed Rothe that his
fiancée was to blame and ordered him to put an end to the
relationship. Rothe duly obeyed - by strangling his
beloved. To protect Rothe, the German police arranged for the
death to look like suicide, but Rothe found he had acquired a taste for
killing...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.