After the delightful wit of the Sacha Guitry title La poison (1951-also reviewed) I decided to again dig into my pile of unwatched DVDs. Having found his final Krimi The Sinister Monk (1965-also reviewed) to be superb,I decided it was time to discover where it had all began.
View on the film:
Before it become a genre which would have a huge impact on the Giallo years later, director Harald Reinl establishes the foundations of the Krimi with his regular cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke scanning the streets of London under deep fog (filmed in Denmark as a stand in for the UK, which adds to the wonderfully off-beat atmosphere) in winding panning shots framing Inspector Hedge, (played with a enticing curiosity by Siegfried Lowitz) being blind towards standing right next to The Frog.
Keeping the quirky mask of master criminal The Frog (animals later playing a major part in the Giallo) on until the final twist, Reinl webs the hard-nosed Film Noir mood from the police investigations, with strikingly stylised killer set-pieces leaving the burning hot mark of The Frog burning in the murder set-pieces which Reinl leaps into the seedy glamour of cabaret shows in underworld nightclubs.
Introducing the master criminal with the sounds of frogs outside waking a couple up, the screenplay by Reinl's close collaborator J. Joachim Bartsch (here joined with Egon Eis) webs their adaptation of Edgar Wallace's novel with the pulpy thrills of The Frog and his knife-throwing gang becoming increasingly brutal in the execution of their crimes, as they start to fear the police leapfrogging to capturing them,before The Frog has had his taste of the Krimi.
View on the film:
Before it become a genre which would have a huge impact on the Giallo years later, director Harald Reinl establishes the foundations of the Krimi with his regular cinematographer Ernst W. Kalinke scanning the streets of London under deep fog (filmed in Denmark as a stand in for the UK, which adds to the wonderfully off-beat atmosphere) in winding panning shots framing Inspector Hedge, (played with a enticing curiosity by Siegfried Lowitz) being blind towards standing right next to The Frog.
Keeping the quirky mask of master criminal The Frog (animals later playing a major part in the Giallo) on until the final twist, Reinl webs the hard-nosed Film Noir mood from the police investigations, with strikingly stylised killer set-pieces leaving the burning hot mark of The Frog burning in the murder set-pieces which Reinl leaps into the seedy glamour of cabaret shows in underworld nightclubs.
Introducing the master criminal with the sounds of frogs outside waking a couple up, the screenplay by Reinl's close collaborator J. Joachim Bartsch (here joined with Egon Eis) webs their adaptation of Edgar Wallace's novel with the pulpy thrills of The Frog and his knife-throwing gang becoming increasingly brutal in the execution of their crimes, as they start to fear the police leapfrogging to capturing them,before The Frog has had his taste of the Krimi.