Alicia I love this movie so much

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

AutCuddly Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Myriam Nys (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...

melvelvit-1 An ititerant peddler (Michel Simon) finds the body of a young girl in a Swiss forest and alerts an inspector from a neighboring town who'd once been kind to him. When Inspector Matthai (Heinz Ruhmann) gets there, he finds a mob eager to lynch the peddler who soon commits suicide in his cell after a grueling interrogation. Matthai believes the old man was innocent and the savage razor slaying the work of a serial killer prowling the woods along a major highway. No longer on the police force, the ex-inspector sets out to catch the killer by renting a roadside gas station and hiring a young woman with an 8 year-old daughter to be his housekeeper with the intention of using the child as bait... That's a dangerous game to play in this gripping cat-and-mouse thriller that's also a fairly good police procedural, considering the resources and lack of forensics at the time. Gert Frobe is chilling as the misogynist psychopath and it was this performance that led the producers of GOLDFINGER to cast him as the titular megalomaniac.

semiotechlab-658-95444 We stand here before one of the most important German speaking movies of the second half of the 20st century, one of the first explicit series (child-) killer movies and one of the most frightful ones. It contains a creme De la creme of the best German actors of the fifties. However, although the movie plays in Switzerland, all Swiss actors speak High-German and are without exception in side roles. The male main role of Kommissar Dr. Matthäi is played by Heinz Rühmann, who was the most popular German actor of the 20st century. The female main role was given by the Hungarian-Catalan director László Vajda to his girlfriend María Rosa Salgado who was dubbed. The fact that not one example of Bündner German is heard in this movie, although the series killer lives obviously in Chur, the capital of the Grisons, is strange. Even stranger is that the only used Bündner German Name "Huonder" is constantly mispronounced (by Max Haufler who should have known it better). However, two questions arise: First, why did the director agree to Rühmann and his scenario-writer to change dramatically the end? In Dürrenmatts novel "Der Verdacht", Schrott is not caught, and the movie has therefore a completely different face. Second, and more important (and hanging together with the first question): What is this movie about, really? Several times, we hear from the mouth of Dr, Matthäi about the importance of using "intution" in clearing a criminal case. But why, then, is it Matthäi who, in the end, is responsible for the suicide of the chap-man? Matthäi is even fully unable to see his guilt: To the question, on the next day, why the innocent chap-man is found hung up in his cell, he laconically answers: Because he was old, sick, did not want to go on anymore ... . What is it then, that drives Matthäi to catch the real killer? Really his pity with the children? - Hardly, because his character does know or at least not admit such feelings. As a proof, he does not doubt one second about the legitimation of his "method" when he engages Mrs. Haller and her daughter, because he intends to (mis-)use the blond little girl as a guinea-pig in order to attract Schrott. Not even then, when he realizes that the little girl has already escaped several times without him knowing it and when he speaks himself about a "miracle" that nothing has yet happened, he stops his action. This means, that Matthäi rather accepts the death of the little girl as long as he is just capable of catching the murderer. This is an idea about police work which is practically identical with the idea of the criminal. Admittedly, the serious killer stands on the other side of Good and Bad than Matthäi, but somebody who is intending to take the loss of the girl in order to solve his case is so-to-say the twin of the criminal, the line between Good and Bad getting almost non-existent.

superhavi The story of the perverted child murderer SCHROTT (Fröbe) and his hunter MATTHAEI (Rühmann) is still thrilling and frightening. The present events ensure that the story remains current. Fröbe and Rühmann can show their acting skills (what they were not always allowed to do).To keep it short:Ingenious actors in a great film, which is based on a great book, that was written by an ingenious author.I'm waiting for the Hollywood-remake.