I love this movie so much

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

just watch it!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

(I'm afraid there are going to be some spoilers. However, I'll try to limit their number and scope.)An unusually original, clever and intelligent thriller, well capable of competing with the best of American output. There are also some scenes which, once seen, cannot be unseen : I defy anyone to forget Gert Fröbe and his winsome skull-like rictus.However - and in this case it's a rather large "however" - the movie is not without its problems. Problem one : the movie tells of a (retired) police inspector who is determined to catch a child killer. In order to do so he uses another, completely innocent and unsuspecting child as bait, in the same way that a hunter might tie a bleating goat to a tree. This is seriously, seriously unethical behavior, especially if one takes into account the fact that both the little girl and her mother regard the police inspector as their kindly benefactor. The movie does not fully explore the moral (or rather, immoral) weight and ramifications of this act. Problem two concerns the psychological evolution of the (retired) police inspector. When the movie starts, the inspector is shown as a pretty decent policeman - not a saint, perhaps, nor a bundle of laughs, but certainly someone with a working conscience and a sense of right and wrong. This, in other words, is a man who knows there are certain lines one should not cross. Later on, the same man tethers a goat / child to a tree, which is a hideously transgressive act. So where does this ruthlessness (or cruelty, or callousness, or blindness, or fanaticism, or...) come from ? Why, and how, does the man give himself permission to behave like this ? What has happened to his heart, his soul ? Feel free to ask the question, but do not count on the movie to give you an answer, or even a beginning of an answer...

"Es geschah am hellichten Tag" or "It Happened in Broad Daylight" is a German 95-minute black-and-white film from the late 1950s, so this one will have its 60th anniversary soon. It was directed by Ladislao Aajda, who also adapted Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novel (with Dürrenmatt himself) for the screen. Today, this one is seen as one of Germany's finest films, especially in terms of crime drama. Heinz Rühmann is almost in every scene from start to finish and he was nominated for a German Film Award for his portrayal here. Same goes for Gert Froebe, who has considerably less screen-time though and does pretty much not appear at all in the first half of the film. This one is really all about the main character's (a police detective's) relationship with his employer and also about a man who was arrested despite being innocent.For Froebe, his villain role here, may have been one of the main reasons who he got cast in his career-defining role as Auric Goldfinger, so even if he lost the German Film Award (just like Rühmann), it was a very important film for him. Rühmann, in his mid 50s here, was mostly known in German for the comedy films he made earlier in his career that made him a big star, but here he shows us that he also definitely has the talent for darker, more gritty films. It was quite fun to watch him with the serious material in here. Overall, this was a quite good watch in terms of story, performances and atmosphere. I think you may want to check this one out. Thumbs up for "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" and I see the film was popular enough that they made a sequel several decades later shortly after Rühmann's death, with Joachim Król playing the main character, but I have not seen that one. And there are more sequels from outside Germany. But this one here is the original. Go see it.

An old man is rushing through the woods and stumbles over a dead girl's body. He rushes to the village to call the police. But what he didn't expect happens - he gets the blame for it, not only by police who interrogate mercilessly, but by his fellow villagers. He says he's innocent. But no one believes him, except the chief inspector, who's set to retire in a day or so. But this case consumes him, when it takes a dramatic turn. He takes it upon himself to find out more. So he befriends a lady and her little girl. But they do not know what he's up to. The lady helps him manage a small shop/gas station in the determined vicinity of the attacks. What will he find? What will find him? This is an excellent film, with astounding use of black and white in telling and showing the story. This was remade in 2001 by director Sean Penn with Jack Nicholson in the lead role and with a totally different ending and a more downbeat feel to it. I had already seen it and liked it, before I saw this; but now, I prefer this version. The subject matter may be a bit unsettling to parents, but the treatment is first rate and with very believable dubbed American words. If you miss this relatively unknown foreign film, you've missed one of the best of its kind.

I became curious about this one after realizing that this was a film based on the same source material as a later adaptation directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright, Benicio del Toro and Aaron Eckhart.Penn's version is a very bleak, disturbing film with Jack Nicholson actually disappearing into the role of the main detective character, something he so rarely does these days. The unrelenting gloom of the film was probably what made it less palpable for audiences at the time of its release. I have to wonder if that atmosphere of despair was taken from the book, or simply inserted by Penn in his adaptation of the screenplay.This version from the late 50's is nonetheless a very effective thriller in its own way, with great performances and very well directed. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) gives a very chilling portrait of the killer, while Heinz Ruhmann as Detective Matthai is excellent too, and carries the film well.It's simply one of those solid and well-done black and white thrillers from an earlier era that slips under the wire, and that should be rediscovered again by contemporary audiences. Criterion! Check this one out!