History and Politics
THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US
Director: Wolfgang Staudte
1946, 87 min., English subtitles
1945: Berlin - a town in ruins. The photographer Susanne Wallner (Hildegard Knef) returns to her former apartment after three years in a concentration camp. She finds the apartment occupied by Dr. Mertens (Ernst Wilhelm Borchert), a surgeon, who is haunted by his experiences during the war. Susanne and Mertens have to share the apartment. Despite their differences a friendship forms. When Mertens encounters Brückner (Arno Paulsen), the former commander of his battalion who was responsible for the execution of more than 100 civilians during the war, and is now a successful industrialist, he wants to take justice into his own hands. But Susanne is able to convince him that the war criminal must be tried in court.
Shot in the ruins of Berlin just a year after WWII, THE MURDERERS ARE AMONG US, was the first film made in Germany after the war and has since become a classic antifascist and rubble film. Wolfgang Staudte's achievement was that he took on the country's recent history and its effect on the present as a subject at the time. The film is a classic example of the "antifascist" tradition in DEFA cinema. It reflects the early DEFA Studio's aim to be close to reality, critical and socialist in its films. The film's film noir style successfully blends German expressionism with striking neorealism.
Background
HISTORY AND POLITICS
Antifascism was a central part of the self identity of the GDR and often played a role in DEFA films. Amongst the most important films of the DEFA are those dealing with the Second World War and the crimes of Nazi Germany. Around 60 fiction films produced by the DEFA (of 700) have National Socialism and the time after WWII as their subject matter.
The subjects dealt with and the approaches are very diverse, thus there are films portraying the historic roots of antisemitism and National Socialism, life in wartime, the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust, life after the war and the reconstruction. Proletarian antifascist resistance often plays a central role. Some of the most important film directors of the DEFA such as Konrad Wolf and Frank Beyer have repeatedly turned to the time of the war in their films.
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