Word: ruhmann
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...endlessly through our mind. They are the eternal observers, God's night watchmen, holy voyeurs. Wenders would probably say they are moviegoers, eavesdropping for a few privileged hours on a world more perilous and beautiful than our own. In a lovely scene, Cassiel comforts an old chauffeur (Heinz Ruhmann, a German movie star since 1926) with memories of his childhood. The angel's knowledge validates these reveries, brings the faraway into reassuring emotional close...
...hero is a cool, professional police inspector (Heinz Ruhmann) assigned to investigate the razor murder of an eight-year-old girl in the woods near a small Swiss town. When he breaks the news to her parents, he promises them, in a moment of rare emotional commitment, to bring the murderer to justice. Under pressure from the police, a peddler confesses to the crime, then hangs himself in his cell. But even though the case is officially closed, the inspector is not satisfied. Haunted by the memory of the butchered child and impelled, by his pledge to her parents...
...merely slick. So is the camera work; but some of the performances are better than that. Gert Frobe, who scored so impressively as a comic capitalist in Rosemary, creates with amazingly few gestures one of the most frightening psychopaths the screen has exhibited in recent years. And Actor Ruhmann, as the inspector, skillfully suggests that somewhere behind his wooden expression there are termites at work...
Thus, the pathos is neither expected nor effective, and is, in fact, somewhat grotesque. This is not the fault of Heinz Ruhmann, who plays the exconvict, Voight--interpreting all of his many moods, from puckish drollery to soggy weltschmerz, with maximum effect. The fault rather lies in the nature of the film...
...comic scenes, positively brilliant. Helmut Kautner's comic direction is perceptive and lightning fast. His sausage-filled officials are overdone perfectly, and his other minor characters dodge in and out of the story with potent effect. And of course, throughout, there is Heinz Ruhmann's performance, which alone makes The Captain From Koepenick eminently worth seeing...
| 1 |