West German literary film adaptation with Gert Fröbe and GOLDEN GLOBE winner Christine Kaufmann
In 1961, Paul May (spoiled with success through "08/15" (1954) and "Und ewig singen die Wälder / And the Woods Sing Forever" (1959)) dared to make another film adaptation of John Knittel's successful novel of the same name. Artur Brauner took over the production with his CCC-Film. The film was shot at the original location in the Swiss canton of Graubünden.
Jonas Lauretz (Gert Fröbe) is a true monster: he humiliates his wife (Edith Schulze-Westrum), abuses his daughter Hanna (Anita Höfer), and has crippled his son Niklas (excellent as always: Christian Wolff). Only daughter Sylvia (Christine Kaufmann) has it a little better because she works in the village and can thus escape the old man's influence. He is still very respected as a sawmill owner, but the debts are pressing. One day he has to go to prison for a long time and the family can breathe a sigh of relief. At least briefly! In the meantime, Sylvia has inherited an inheritance and modeled for an old painter (Rudolf Forster). When old Lauretz returns home from prison, things get worse than ever. The situation is becoming unbearable. Then Hanna, Niklas and the farmhand Jörg (Joseph Offenbach), who hates old Lauretz as passionately as his children, come up with a disastrous plan. One dark night, the family tyrant mysteriously disappears. A while later, the justice fanatic Andreas von Richenau (Joachim Hansen), who is now married to Sylvia Lauretz, is tasked with shedding light on the dark family affairs. Some dust is better not to stir up...
A very successful film with great actors, which was also an immense success at the box office at the time. Especially Gert Fröbe (unforgotten as "Goldfinger"), Christine Kaufmann (also seen alongside Steve Reeves in "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1959)), Christian Wolff ("Verbrechen nach Schulschluss / Crimes After School Ends" and "Der blaue Nachtfalter / The Blue Moth" , both 1959) and Joachim Hansen (the young Dag from "Und ewig singen die Wälder / And the Forests Sing Eternally" (1959) and also worth seeing in the legendary ABC mini-series "Winds of War / Der Feuersturm" (1983)) were rightly big stars of the German film industry. Anita Höfer, born in 1944, also impressed in the West German classic "Schwarzer Kies" in the same year.
The beautiful shots from the Swiss mountains do the rest to make this film a special experience.
The family tragedy surrounding a tyrant's murder and the shadows of the past were simply still the right material at the right time, which spoke directly to countless filmgoers. It is also interesting that the material was filmed again as a mini-series for television broadcaster ZDF in 1985. This time EUROPEAN FILM AWARD nominee Mario Adorf shone as the family tyrant, and the Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers gave her role as Sylvia a much more erotically direct approach. Her nude bathing in the mountain stream was the topic of the big-letter West German newspaper BILD for a few days. In those days, absolutely no one could get past Maruschka Detmers' breathtaking bust.
It's interesting how a film's subject matter can affect an audience receptive to this topic at different times.
