Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

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.

Karl Self Der Verdacht ("The Suspicion") by Friedrich Dürrenmatt is one of my favourite plays, and even books. Packed with suspense, it provides deep insights into the relations between crime, justice and revenge. The book makes a point of not ending like a normal crime story, with the inspector apprehending the criminal. In the book, the monster gets away and his hunter becomes corrupted and mired. The movie is clearly less bold, much more middle-of-the-road, and ends (almost) happily. It's well made, very well acted (featuring three heavyweights of German post-war cinema, Heinz Rühmann, Siegfried Lowitz and Gerd Fröbe), and overall watchable, but it's not anywhere near as bold or good as the book.Both book and film deal with sexual child abuse, which in this form was a novelty at the time. Unfortunately it reinforces the stereotype of children being threatened by the "evil uncle" (i. e. a preying stranger), while by far the most sexual abuse to children is committed not by strangers but by people known to the children -- male relatives, teachers, priests, etc. Also the perpetrator is not a pedophile per se but driven to his acts by a dominating wife (cherchez la femme).The movie is also an interesting document of the social mores at the time. Although he's innocent and does the right thing by reporting the crime, the vagabond (I suspect he's meant to be a Jenischer, i. e. someone who's living like a gypsy but isn't one ethnically) garners no sympathies whatsoever. Society is cold and uncaring, they only want a scapegoat. They're happy to see the vagabond die, they wanted to see him lynched in the first place. The way children are displayed, as living in a Freudian dream world, is also interesting.

armandcbris I became curious about this one after realizing that this was a film based on the same source material as a later adaptation directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright, Benicio del Toro and Aaron Eckhart.Penn's version is a very bleak, disturbing film with Jack Nicholson actually disappearing into the role of the main detective character, something he so rarely does these days. The unrelenting gloom of the film was probably what made it less palpable for audiences at the time of its release. I have to wonder if that atmosphere of despair was taken from the book, or simply inserted by Penn in his adaptation of the screenplay.This version from the late 50's is nonetheless a very effective thriller in its own way, with great performances and very well directed. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) gives a very chilling portrait of the killer, while Heinz Ruhmann as Detective Matthai is excellent too, and carries the film well.It's simply one of those solid and well-done black and white thrillers from an earlier era that slips under the wire, and that should be rediscovered again by contemporary audiences. Criterion! Check this one out!

regie-4 Its one of the movies where black&white perfectly fits. Its potential is very impressive; watching Gert Froebe arguing with his wife is high class cinema. This movie is a recommendation for Froebe playing psychotic bad guys in the first place. Although the movie focuses on Detective Matthai (Ruehmann) its Gert Froebe's physical presence and his face impressions that are really admirable.I think the end of this movie will reveal lots of questions. What happens to the murder after he got caught? Will he be transported to jail or a lunatic asylum? Will the Detective marry the lady? Will the little girl get psychological treatment? I admire this dark psycho thriller. I also would like to know what happens after the murder has been caught.I would recommend this movie to watch in darkness without any lights on. Because of the black&white screen, and the music watching this movie gets very intense!