Strasbourg 1939: Franz Köhler, a German, loves the young Frenchwoman Mirelle, and is denounced and arrested by his brother Willy, a soon-to-be SS henchman. Franz spends the wartime winter of 1944/45 in a prison camp in Poland; he and his fellow prisoners plod away in a stone quarry, where he meets his brother, now a major in the SS, once again. When the Eastern front moves closer, the prisoners are to be put in an underground military shelter, which is then to be blown up. Franz escapes, hoping to get help from the Russians. After being on the loose for days on end in the cold wintry countryside, he is finally shot by his brother.

Strasbourg 1939: Franz is so in love with Mirelle that he gets into a fight for her at a nightclub. It is a love that triumphs over national borders; the love between a German and a Frenchwoman. He is thus considered an enemy and denounced by his brother Willy, who is about to join the SS. Some years after his arrest, Franz spends the final wartime winter (1944/45) in a camp in occupied Poland. There he meets his brother again, now a major in the SS and one of the camp supervisors. The prisoners must work in a stone quarry under extremely tough conditions. Because the Soviet army, and thus the Eastern Front, are continually moving closer, the SS decides to blow up a mining shelter while the prisoners are inside. Willy informs his brother of these plans and demands his collaboration. Franz in turn passes on the information to his fellow prisoners. When the stone quarry needs to be blasted again, the forced labourers use too much dynamite on purpose, helping Franz to escape; he is to be the one to cross the frontline and get help from the Russians.

For Franz, a long journey ensues through an endless, merciless wintry landscape. At first he tries to hide in the labyrinth of the old mine. Willy and two other SS men are hot on Franz’s heels, and their German shepherd can sniff out every trace of the escapee. He manages to jump onto a supply wagon, but is discovered. The train is on its way to Malchow, and the SS informs its people at the station. Upon arrival, the Red Army blows up the place, and Franz manages to get away again. Aided by a disillusioned nurse, he is able to find a temporary hiding place and can then continue with his escape. From time to time he finds help, mostly from women, but the dog Wotan leads his pursuers to him again and again. In the end, Wotan drags the escapee off a bike, sinks his teeth into him and is almost strangled in the process. From then on the animal accompanies the hunted man as his loyal servant, wrenches him out of an icy waterhole, yet ultimately puts his pursuers back on the right track. Franz finally manages to cross a river, across which the Red Army is camped, but his brother has found him and guns him down with a machine gun that was left behind by the retreating Germans. The closing credits read: “On this same day in January 1945, the concentration camp was blown up. None of its 22,000 prisoners survived.”

MAN AND BEAST was made at the end of an era in which West German cinema (unlike the GDR’s DEFA films) purported to come to terms with Germany’s Nazi past through films that were soon attacked by younger critics as being “Persil films”. These were films that focused on opponents of the Nazi system, generally giving the impression that the Nazi state was the result of the actions of a radical, fanatical minority, and purporting that most Germans tended towards resistance. Against this backdrop, the film was in some ways progressive. Admittedly, one can’t expect to find political discourse or an examination of fascist ideology in the film – that simply didn’t take place yet in West German cinema of the time. The focus here, and what makes MAN AND BEAST still interesting from today’s viewpoint, is the comparatively simple and categorical separation of good and evil, between German perpetrators and German victims.

It thus makes sense that the film falls back on myths: Franz and Willy are reminiscent of the Biblical brothers Cain and Abel, as well as the brothers and adversaries Franz and Karl in Friedrich Schiller’s “The Robbers”. Their opposing natures are not explained; and the fact that Franz and Willy’s mother does not express any opinion about the disagreement between her sons is significant – also as a reflection of the attitude of many Germans at the time. The film is infused with Biblical and mythological motifs: a prisoner is not only whipped, but also bound to a cross. And the SS henchmen don’t just say that they’ll shoot the prisoners, but that they’ll “show them where God lives!” The river that Franz crosses at the end of the film is reminiscent of ancient Hades; death awaits on the other side.

The film, which manages to ”find itself“ after a somewhat laborious start, becomes much more riveting, especially due to its trivial, yet, on a physical level, very precisely staged aspects. The conspicuously high number of women that Franz meets during his escape are all on his side and try to help him – but not because they have a reflected position on his situation. They are simply following their hearts, and have something of a motherly instinct. Even Willy’s SS underlings, who rebel against his command in the end, are steered by their emotions and do not show any well-grounded oppositional political awareness. Against this backdrop, even the German shepherd that bears the name “Wotan”, a name heavy with Nazi ideology connotations, is a significant character: a creature that is neither good nor evil, but simply loyally serves whatever master it happens to have. Even when it tries to save Franz, the animal becomes his traitor unintentionally – then whines and howls heartbreakingly, as it instinctively realises that the escapee it was trying to protect has died.

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1963

Production Year

1963

color

b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1,66

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Drama, Anti-war / War Film

Topic

Relationship / Family, World War II, National Socialism

Available Media

DVD

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil)