Review: "Einer von uns Beiden"/One of the two of us 1974 Petersen's Debut! Prochnow! Sommer!
Out of the new wave of German movie directors that tried to rebuild the genre cinema after the 1968 cultural revolution, Wolfgang Petersen surely was the most successful one. Later in his career he would be directing major Hollywood box-office hits like "In the Line of Fire" or "Troy," but he always came back to crime cinema (most notably with the exquisite neo-noir "Shattered") where he had originally started off with. So this is his theatrical debut from 1974, already starring Jürgen Prochnow, who would be later the commander of Petersen's "Das Boot" the immaculate German WW2 submarine movie.
This one here is based (in good Krimitradition) on a novel by a professor of sociology. Well: If you are familiar with Petersen's earlier works, you would know that he did not shy away from breaking the code of morals such as the naked rape of then 15-year old Nastassja Kinski in the Krimi "Reifezugnis"/For your Love Only or even inserting HC penetration footage into the TV(!!) movie Die Konsequenz/The Consequence in 1977.
So when the movie starts with an accomplished pre-louma-crane shot of a sweeping camera that depicts the demolition of an old tenement building in Berlin to move over into the window of a similar building nearby - and the first thing we see is Jürgen Prochnow lying in bed, masturbating and j.. off, I was not really surprised.
The shot establishes Prochnow's character as the quintessential loser: single, without work, without hope, living in a soon-to-be demolished old tenement house with 3 other misfits and without a toilet. The three other ones are the prostitute Mitzi (delightful Elke Sommer who is not afraid to show her body) an old retiree with no money and a washed-up former (prostitute, actress, drag-queen, mannquin??) whatever.
While Mitzi/Sommer is dreaming of leaving it all with the money she has been able to save since her boyfriend/pimp is in jail, the looser called "Ziegenhals"=Goat's Neck/Prochnow has dropped out of studying social sciences and lives by ghostwriting thesis papers for other students while his literary works are regularly rejected by the publishing houses.
Working on a such a paper, he finds out that his former professor obviously plagiated his doctor work from an unknown american paper twenty years ago. Although the professor is smooth and likable, Prochnow now sees his chance of a carefree living by blackmailing him. As our Professor is just about to enter politics "big time", he initailly agrees to pay but secretely investigates the life of the blackmailer to find a way to get rid of him. He disguises as customer of Mitzi/Sommer to extract information from her. Then we see him waiting for her in the night in an abandoned part of the city, where they both had agreed for a meeting.
Meanwhile, Mitzi's/Sommer's boyfriend/pimp has been released from prison and wants it to be like "in the good old times" even more so when he finds out that Mitzi has put aside a considerable amount of money.
Next day, it turns out, Mitzi was killed and the savings were stolen from her flat. Now we have 3 suspects: Prochnow, the Professor, the Pimp and we have a poice inspector to sort this out.
Until then, the movie is a blast and I was very, very happy with it. There is so much talent in front and behind the camera that it is a pure joy. And now, I was expecting a deadly menage-a-trois with the inspector thrown in to untangle the web of violence and deception.
Sadly - and this is the only cricism I have with the movie - Petersen decided to cut out the Pimp and the Inspector in the next 50 minutes, just to show the cat-and-mouse playing between Prochnow and the Professor. Which is very, very intelligent and entertaining but could have been so much more.
The blackmail-game goes back and forth between the two and with each round the stakes get higher. Finally, Prochnow seduces/hits on the professor's daughter, who falls heavily in love with him. The professor now sees the only chance of a solution in Prochnow's death and uses his sociological skills in manipulating the others to do it.
This is a fine movie that has some added spice but basically plays like a long episode of "Derrick", where the social motivation, the seeking of comfort and status motivates the most evil crimes.
In the end, the viewer has to decide who actually killed Mitzi as it is never made clear: The violent Pimp who uses violence methodically and would not kill his "property" as it would not give him pleasure? Prochnow, who never shows any signs of physical violence but is without any scruples and clearly PTSD in the scenes after the murder? Or is it the Professor, the only character being shown to be able to kill and also being shown not to be able to have a "normal" sexual relation with his (very bautiful) wife, his (very voluptious) secretary, or even with teasing Elke Sommer???
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| Can't stand his man with his secretary, a surprising role for Anita Kupsch. |
The final frame reveals the solution, but it took me 24 hours to understand that...
Again we have a Luiggi Waldleitner production (who produced the post-Edgar Wallace Krimis of Alfred Vohrer) and we see beautiful Krimistar Elke Sommer, Jürgern Prochnow, TV Krimi vetaran Klaus Schwartzkopf, Otto Sander (the old "Das Boot" commander) and even Anita Kupsch who the Germans know from far far more trivial stuff. Most of all, we get Claus-Theo Gärtner as the pimp who would later get his own 300+ episodes and 38 years running TV-Krimi-series with Matula/A Case for Two.
Direction is crisp and the movie stands the test of time quite well. The movie was awarded 2 German Film Awards (of the old FRG) and was proposed for the Academy Awards but finally not nominated by the commitee.
The critical success lead to a string of TV-movies for Wolfgang Petersen before hitting it big time with "Das Boot" and "The Neverending Story", the rest, they say, is history.
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