Der Verlorene (1951)

Der Verlorene (1951) is a post-World War II Peter Lorre directed West German rubble vengeance and regret existential experimental-Nazi vivisection lab film noir, directed and starring the recovering morphine-addicted super-scion of film noir, Peter Lorre.

Peter Lorre does manage within the scope of this late period rubble film, to create a most memorable character, although he does so much Lorre drift, peer, stare and smoke, and like all Peter Lorre films, and like all of Peter Lorre's life, the mis en scene is heavy on the cigarette-based action.

Marriage in the Shadows (1947)

Marriage in the Shadows (1947) or as we should prefer to offer it its proper title, the film called Ehe im Schatten is a beautiful noir melodrama masterpiece of East German Trümmerfilm, telling an epic war-spanning tale of Nazi complicity and Nazi attrocity and the Nazi destruction of art and the Nazi destruction of social bonds, and the Nazi destruction of the theatre of Germany and the Nazi destruction of personal relationships and friendness, with the Nazi destruction of social bonds driven home, sad frame after sad frame, in a story of Trümmer awfulness, elevating liberal thought and love, and showing that the only things stronger than Nazism are on the threshold of being itself.

Here is the story, as it were: in Nazi Germany actor Hans refuses to divorce his Jewish wife Elisabeth. He is threatened to be drafted and sent to the front while she will be deported to a concentration camp. Desperate, Hans decides that suicide is their only way out.

Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946)

Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946) is an immediately post-war German Trümmerfilm, a style or genre translated as rubble film and was possibly the first film to be produced in Germany after World War Two, and maybe even the first anti-fascist film should such a canon be similarly useful.

To compare the cinema of 1946 and sample that of the US and that of Germany is to stumble upon the most severe of contrasts, and yet within this the word noir might still function to explain what we are seeing.

Die Mörder sind unter uns, known in English as The Murderers Are Among Us, is the most naturally ironic film one could imagine. The irony of anything at all happening in the rubbled remains of Berlin is strong enough without adding romance, and Christmas.