Fascinating, not so much for its grim story on the hunt for a serial killer of little girls than for what it suggests about acceptable limits on murder investigation techniques in post-war Germany. Co-written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (playwright of THE VISIT) and directed by Ladislao Vajda, the first half is a neat, if unexceptional, police procedural showing step-by-step what happens after tramp/peddler Michel Simon trips over a fresh victim while cutting thru the woods. Phoning the police as soon as he reaches the next town, his drifter status makes him not a concerned citizen but a likely suspect. Townspeople & the police think its more likely he reported the crime to cover his own actions. Only top detective Heinz Rühmann thinks otherwise, but as he’s leaving the force tomorrow . . . well, the courts will follow up. But then events take a tragic turn and he’s more convinced than ever that the peddler didn’t do it. Now off the force, his only clue a fantastical drawing the young victim made at school. He thinks it depicts the scene of the crime and the murderer. But how to decipher her clues? So far, so good. But here the film becomes sehr Deutsch, with our heroic detective spending half a year narrowing the crime scene area and finding a likely young girl to ‘bait’ a trap for the real killer. Naturally, once he spots an 8-yr-old who’s just the type, he lies his way into putting her in harms way without letting the girl's mother in on the mission. Sure, he's obsessed, but are we being asked to applaud his irresponsibility? Very weird. So too Gert Fröbe, who conveniently shows up as needed by the plot to play the sicko childlike suspect. Copying Peter Lorre in M/’31; or is it just untranslatable Bavarian humor?
DOUBLE-BILL: Not seen here but apparently remade as a slow/mo art film in TWILIGHT/’90. That might work.
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