"Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen" or "Darkness Fell on Gotenhafen" is a West German German-language film from 1960, so this one is already over 55 years old. It was written and directed by Frank Wisbar, one of the most impactful German filmmakers between 1955 and 1960, so this one here is possibly his last fairly famous work. There were color movies already by 1960, but still it should not come as a surprise to anybody that this is one of the many black-and-white films. But it has sound of course, this addition existed for a long time at that point already. I cannot say I am particularly familiar with any of the actors from this 100-minute film here except Wolfgang Preiss maybe. And he appeared in many films that attempted to come to terms with what happened during World War II in Germany. Most of the film's action takes place when Germany had already lost the war and the Russians were coming. Germany and its citizens were in no man's land at this point already. Some kept fighting, some kept believing, some surrendered and very many just tried to live. This was what everything was about. And this is also one of the core plot elements of this film we have here. Another would be the sinking of the Gustloff which is the central element of the last third of this film, an important historic event. Unfortunately, I myself am not too interested in films that are too much about the military and this is also the case here. Apart from that, the film has one major problem: namely the fact that it is just way too much for 1 hour and 40 minutes: too many characters, too much happens, too many plot changes etc. Wisbar should have given the movie a lot more focus and just less action in general. The character elaborations also suffered from that and the result was that it was hard to care for anybody in here really despite all the gruesome things happening. These are the reasons why I did not enjoy the watch too much. And why I give this film a thumbs-down. Not recommended.
