Review: Teufel in Seide / The Devil wore Silk 1955/6 the German "Sunset Boulevard" Krimi !?

February 27, 2025

Review: Teufel in Seide / The Devil wore Silk 1955/6 the German "Sunset Boulevard" Krimi !?

One of the companies that rebuilt the (West-)German cinema out of the ashes of WW2 was "Deutsche London Film," a company financed and supplied with British permissions by none else than Alex Korda's "London Film Production.". Handled through "London & Overseas Film Services," they erected a new film production system in the (undestroyed) town of Göttingen that was strangely close to the Russian-controlled sector of Germany and thus ideal for any spy activity the CI6 and Alex Korda would pursue. Just guessing.

The German CEO of "Deutsche London Film" was Karl Julius Fritzsche, who had been production manager of TOBIS during WW2. He died in 1954, and distribution of "London Film" (UK) productions was taken over by PRISMA and CONSTANTIN (both owned by Preben Philipsen of RIALTO). Now we're getting there, right?

Fritzsche had shied away from producing and distributing Krimis as he did not believe them to become successful in Germany, basically leaving the field open for Artur Brauner and CCC, who, until 1959, were the main producers of German Krimis.

After Fritsche's death, a criminal movie plot could be financed by London Films. So now we get to this one here: A big-budget Deutsche London Films production, starring two of the biggest German stars with Curd Jürgens and Lilli Palmer (who had extensively worked for London Film during WW2).

Based on a 1940 novel by Jewish-Austrian emigre Gina Kraus who worked as a script writer in Hollywood and directed Rolf Hansen, whose only Krimi this is. Gina Kraus in fact was the step sister to one of Hitler's top spies, Stephanie von Hohenlohe. There you go...

Synopsis:
A rich widow falls in love with an unsuccessful musician, takes him in, provides him with everything, marries him and then goes on jealousy-rampages including suicide attempts to control him. The movie starts however, with her being found ODed and him without alibi. In flashbacks and voice-overs by the musician, now the story unfolds and multiple suspects and motives appear. Did he kill her? Did she kill herself or was she killed and someone played it on him?

I was so strikingly reminded of „Sunset Boulevard“ that, watching this I thought it was just „inspired“ by this. But then the novel by Gina Kraus was there in 1940, and she was part of the Hollywood-diaspora of (Austro-)Germans that Billy Wilder belonged to, too.

Interesting. If this plausible connection can be established we have the German brother of „Sunset Boulevard“.

But the other connection is the early Technicolor-Noir-Drama of "Leave Her to Heaven" from 1945 which was based on a novel by Ben Aimes Williams from 1944, four years after Gina Kraus had written her treatment. This movie is very close in subject, plot and tone to "Teufel in Seide" with less emphasis on the actual murder-hunt.

That would be another interesting subject to investigate.

Lead roles are Curd Jürgens as musician (who is sadly much too old and „established“ for the part) and Lilli Palmer who fits the bill but is no match for Gloria Swanson. The rest are good but staple big romance movies actors. And that is the problem. Imagine „Sunset Boulevard“ taking the drama seriously without any ironic detachment and overblown drama with not-so-fantastic actors.

Lilli Palmer cranks it up to 11, and she indeed won the German film award in that year. Jürgens is good but simply not believable. The movie itself is craftily directed and studio shots at Artur Brauner’s CCC Studios leave nothing to complain. It moves along at a steady pace and until the very end we get a good few potential suspects and alibis, crime-scene reflections and how her death happens. I was guessing till the end, but then remembered that this was a mid-1950s German traditional drama movie, so I was not expecting any plot-twist.

Palmer herself was no stranger to this situation. In 1948 the love interest of her husband Rex Harrison - Carol Landis - was presumed to have commited suicide by sleeping-pill OD... Life is stranger than fiction... To this day, her relatives believe her to have been murdered....

One could even come to the conclusion that Palmer herself left some clues to the suicide-case of Carol Landis in this movie...

Compared to „Sunset Boulevard“, this clearly is very dated and is not a masterpiece, but solid entertainment from a bygone era. Compared to "Leave Her to Heaven", this fares well, both movies feel like siblings and make a fine double-feature.

The movie did very good business and received several national awards, finally giving other fillmmakers the opportunity to shoot Krimis. Krimi releases considerably move up in 1957/1958 until the final decision by Preben Philips was being made to produce the Edgar Wallace movies for Germany himself.