Misplaced Pages

The Devil Strikes at Night

Article snapshot taken from[REDACTED] with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
(Redirected from Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) 1957 film by Robert Siodmak
The Devil Strikes at Night
Original German poster
Directed byRobert Siodmak
Written by
Produced byRobert Siodmak
Walter Traut
Claus Hardt
Starring
CinematographyGeorg Krause
Edited byWalter Boos
Music bySiegfried Franz
Production
company		Divina Film
Distributed byGloria Film
Release date
  • 19 September 1957 (1957-09-19)
Running time105 minutes
CountryWest Germany
LanguageGerman

The Devil Strikes at Night (German: Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) is a 1957 West German crime thriller film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Claus Holm, Mario Adorf and Hannes Messemer. The film noir is based on the true story of Bruno Lüdke. It was shot at the Baldham Studios. The film's sets were designed by the art directors Gottfried Will and Rolf Zehetbauer. Location shooting took place in Berlin and Munich. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as winning German Film Award for Best Fiction Film in its native country.

Synopsis

The film is a highly fictionalized account of the hunt for a serial killer, as he murders women during the last year or two of World War II. In one of the crimes, a man is arrested who is obviously innocent. An investigator begins to unravel a thread leading to the real killer, but becomes frustrated by Nazi authorities who believe that revealing the truth will undermine people's faith in their supposedly infallible system. The detective story gradually evolves into a narrative about the evils of political propaganda and corruption.

Cast

See also

References

  1. Spicer p.110
  2. Noack p.328
  3. Fisher p.159
  4. "The 30th Academy Awards (1958) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-25.

Bibliography

  • Fisher, Jaimey (ed.). Generic Histories of German Cinema: Genre and Its Deviations. Boydell & Brewer, 2013.
  • Noack, Frank. Veit Harlan: The Life and Work of a Nazi Filmmaker. University Press of Kentucky, 2016.
  • Spicer, Andrew. Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. Scarecrow Press, 2010.

External links

Films directed by Robert Siodmak
Europe
1930–1939
Hollywood
1941–1951
Europe
1952–1969
German submission for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
Germany
(until 1990 West Germany)
East Germany
(1949–1990)


Stub icon

This article related to a German film of the 1950s is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Stub icon

This article about a crime drama film is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories:
The Devil Strikes at Night Add topic