"Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht" or "Looking for His Murderer" or "Der Himmelskandidat" is a German black-and-white film from the year 1931 and German acting legend Heinz Rühmann was not even 30 when he starred in here, bis breakthrough performance as a lead actor 2 years before the Nazis came into power. The director is Robert Siodmak, also only around the age of 30, who went on to become one of Germanys most influential filmmakers in the decades afterward. The story here is about a young man who wants to die, but does not have the guts to commit suicide. As a consequence, he makes a contract with a criminal according to which he has to kill him in the next 12 hours. However, unluckily for Rühmann's character (or luckily?), he falls in love and makes some great new friends at the same time, so he and the new people in his life try their best to find the killer before he can commit his horrible deed. But right when they do, they realize another criminal has entered the picture. This film runs originally 90 minutes, but sadly only 50 minutes of this movie still exist. Quite a pity as I would have liked to see the rest as well. Anyway, even at 50 minutes, it felt like an entertaining watch. Despite the somewhat serious background, this is a 100% comedy movie as with pretty much all of Rühmann's early work. I recommend the watch. Go check it out.
5 Reviews
Very Silly Black Humor
boblipton12 August 2023
Heinz Rühmann tries to kill himself with his pistol, but can't pull the trigger. Fortunately, his apartment is invaded by cat burglar Raimund Janitschek. After some negotiations, Janitschek agrees to kill him before noon of the next day in return for fifteen thousand reichsmarks from Rühmann's insurance policy. That nigh, however, Rühmann meets Lien Deyers, and they fall in love. They track down Janitschek, but he has sold the contract to Hermann Speelmans.
I looked at a 51-minute cutdown of the 97-minute feature, but it held together well. It's the third feature I've seen based on Jules Verne's LES TRIBULATIONS D'UN CH CHINOIR EN CHINE, thanks to some fine manic performances, a nice burlesque of the underworld organization from Lang's M, and a score by Friedrich Hollaender filled with silly sound effects. I can see how the longer version could easily fill the gaps in the shorter version, but they're not necessary to make this movie, which includes an early writing credit by Billy Wilder, very funny.
I looked at a 51-minute cutdown of the 97-minute feature, but it held together well. It's the third feature I've seen based on Jules Verne's LES TRIBULATIONS D'UN CH CHINOIR EN CHINE, thanks to some fine manic performances, a nice burlesque of the underworld organization from Lang's M, and a score by Friedrich Hollaender filled with silly sound effects. I can see how the longer version could easily fill the gaps in the shorter version, but they're not necessary to make this movie, which includes an early writing credit by Billy Wilder, very funny.
Fast, hilarious black humor
manuel-pestalozzi23 December 2004
Warning: Spoilers
This is an interesting early work of Robert Siodmak, one of the great masters of film noir. A certain Billie Wilder' shares the credit for the script. A still very young Heinz Rühmann, Germany's Jack Lemmon, is starring.
SPOILER ALERT Contrary to what I read somewhere, this movie is not a premake' of D.O.A. The story has, however, a certain similarity with Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer. The movie is fast, very fast. Others would have made a two hour feature with the story, this one takes 56 minutes in all. It starts straight away with our young hero trying to shoot a bullet into his head. No explanation whatsoever is given as to his motives moviegoers in the Germany of 1931 obviously did not need any. He is disturbed by a burglar and puts a contract on himself, so to speak. The burglar tells him that he will hit him in the near future and dutifully makes a cross on his back with a piece of chalk not unlike the M' in Fritz Lang's movie of the same year. With the cross on his back the young hero goes to a nightclub and falls in love with a young girl. Of course he tries to rescind from the contract and desperately looks for the burglar, only to learn that he had passed on the job to a subcontractor! Not just any subcontractor, but the very same Jim, the man with the scar, as he solemnly declares.
In this movie German Expressionism meets American slapstick. The result is a very entertaining picture with dark humor that verges on the abyss of desperation. You feel that its makers had great fun doing it. The sound effects are hilarious. The wind sounds like the wind machine in a movie studio, and you have the impression that it is done that way on purpose. Watch for a hilarious ride in an ambulance with its grotesquely accelerated sequences. The Berlin of the early 30ies flits past in quirky angles.
SPOILER ALERT Contrary to what I read somewhere, this movie is not a premake' of D.O.A. The story has, however, a certain similarity with Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer. The movie is fast, very fast. Others would have made a two hour feature with the story, this one takes 56 minutes in all. It starts straight away with our young hero trying to shoot a bullet into his head. No explanation whatsoever is given as to his motives moviegoers in the Germany of 1931 obviously did not need any. He is disturbed by a burglar and puts a contract on himself, so to speak. The burglar tells him that he will hit him in the near future and dutifully makes a cross on his back with a piece of chalk not unlike the M' in Fritz Lang's movie of the same year. With the cross on his back the young hero goes to a nightclub and falls in love with a young girl. Of course he tries to rescind from the contract and desperately looks for the burglar, only to learn that he had passed on the job to a subcontractor! Not just any subcontractor, but the very same Jim, the man with the scar, as he solemnly declares.
In this movie German Expressionism meets American slapstick. The result is a very entertaining picture with dark humor that verges on the abyss of desperation. You feel that its makers had great fun doing it. The sound effects are hilarious. The wind sounds like the wind machine in a movie studio, and you have the impression that it is done that way on purpose. Watch for a hilarious ride in an ambulance with its grotesquely accelerated sequences. The Berlin of the early 30ies flits past in quirky angles.
a minor classic of the mixed style 1930-1931
kekseksa17 August 2017
This film has a story that is not in the least original. It had been one before 1931 and it has done many times since - the man who wants to commit suicide, hires someone to kill him and then changes his mind. The first occurrence I know of is in the Jules Verne story Les Tribulations d'un chinois en Chine in 1879 which appears to have been the inspiration for Ernst Neubach who provided the idea for the script (whether he actually wrote a play on the subject seems uncertain). Much the same idea had already been used in a US film, Douglas Fairbanks' Flirting with Fate in 1916. The strength of this film is not therefore in its story nor in the writing in itself (which is relatively not very special) so much as in the general organization of the film (mise en scène, sound, scenery, acting style) which is absolutely outstanding.
To appreciate how good it is, just look at a version for the same story that Neubach himself directed in 1952 (Man lebt nur einmal). Despite the fact that Neubach employed set designer Emil Hasler who had worked on some classics of the Weimar period (inc. M and The Blue Angel) and on the excellent 1943 film Münchhausen, it is a very, very ordinary and uninteresting farce and, frankly, painfully unfunny. It was simply impossible in fifties Germany to create the style of the brilliant pre-war years (as Fritz Lang would also discover on his return). Neubach had actually made the film in exile in France too in 1949 as On demande un assassin with Fernandel but this I have not seen.
This is not a silent film but belongs to a special category of film for which as far as I know we have no name - films made in the thirties that employed sound (often, as here, in very interesting and inventive ways) not primarily for the purpose of dialogue (which is often minimal) or as incidental score but as an element of mise en scène (a part simply of the general ambiance of the film) while still retaining the visual values of silent films. Apart from the entirely exceptional case of Chaplin (Modern Times) this was a style unknown in the US - Von Sternberg is to some extent an exception - and US films that hesitate involuntarily between "silent" and "sound" are simply badly made films (poor sound quality, stilted over-enunciated dialogue, too much dialogue etc).
But there are some very fine and important examples pf this "mixed style" both in France (Clair's 1931 À nous la liberté is a perfect example as well as being an influence on Chaplin) and in Germany. The style is associated to some extent with the great directors of the silent era (Jean Epstein for instance) but also, more surprisingly, with a younger generation who had only just started making films at the end of that era (like the Siodmak or Clair or Machaty in Czechoslovakia) and in some cases with film-makers who had never made a silent film (Jean Vigo for instance in France). It can also be observed less markedly but to some extent in the great classics of these years (M, The Blue Angel, La Chienne). It is a style, in other words, that produced some of the greatest masterpieces of cinema.
Robert and Curt Siodmak and Billy Wilder as a team, until their enforced departure for the US, proved unsurprisingly real artists in the genre, having also produced the wonderful silent masterpiece Menschen am Sonntag the year before this.
Even if we are missing the beginning of the film explaining why the central character wishes to kill himself, this film still stands as a fine example of this mixed style of the early thirties. Beautiful expressionistic sets (something of a revival by this time in Germany), mildly stylized acting (in fact, more accurately a typical mix of the stylized and the naturalistic), superbly ironic use of sound.
Had the rise of Hitler not destroyed he German film industry, the style might have survived as a natural bridge between the golden age of European film in the late twenties and the "new wave" of the sixties. It does to a certain extent in French "poetic realism" (early Renoir, Carné etc) and in the films of Sacha Guitry but in Germany it died the death while the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians fleeing to the US had no choice but to accept the more banal strictures of US "realist" style.
As is also the case with silent films, later ill-advised "sound" remakes of "mixed style" films are nearly always inferior, and often vastly inferior, to the originals.
To appreciate how good it is, just look at a version for the same story that Neubach himself directed in 1952 (Man lebt nur einmal). Despite the fact that Neubach employed set designer Emil Hasler who had worked on some classics of the Weimar period (inc. M and The Blue Angel) and on the excellent 1943 film Münchhausen, it is a very, very ordinary and uninteresting farce and, frankly, painfully unfunny. It was simply impossible in fifties Germany to create the style of the brilliant pre-war years (as Fritz Lang would also discover on his return). Neubach had actually made the film in exile in France too in 1949 as On demande un assassin with Fernandel but this I have not seen.
This is not a silent film but belongs to a special category of film for which as far as I know we have no name - films made in the thirties that employed sound (often, as here, in very interesting and inventive ways) not primarily for the purpose of dialogue (which is often minimal) or as incidental score but as an element of mise en scène (a part simply of the general ambiance of the film) while still retaining the visual values of silent films. Apart from the entirely exceptional case of Chaplin (Modern Times) this was a style unknown in the US - Von Sternberg is to some extent an exception - and US films that hesitate involuntarily between "silent" and "sound" are simply badly made films (poor sound quality, stilted over-enunciated dialogue, too much dialogue etc).
But there are some very fine and important examples pf this "mixed style" both in France (Clair's 1931 À nous la liberté is a perfect example as well as being an influence on Chaplin) and in Germany. The style is associated to some extent with the great directors of the silent era (Jean Epstein for instance) but also, more surprisingly, with a younger generation who had only just started making films at the end of that era (like the Siodmak or Clair or Machaty in Czechoslovakia) and in some cases with film-makers who had never made a silent film (Jean Vigo for instance in France). It can also be observed less markedly but to some extent in the great classics of these years (M, The Blue Angel, La Chienne). It is a style, in other words, that produced some of the greatest masterpieces of cinema.
Robert and Curt Siodmak and Billy Wilder as a team, until their enforced departure for the US, proved unsurprisingly real artists in the genre, having also produced the wonderful silent masterpiece Menschen am Sonntag the year before this.
Even if we are missing the beginning of the film explaining why the central character wishes to kill himself, this film still stands as a fine example of this mixed style of the early thirties. Beautiful expressionistic sets (something of a revival by this time in Germany), mildly stylized acting (in fact, more accurately a typical mix of the stylized and the naturalistic), superbly ironic use of sound.
Had the rise of Hitler not destroyed he German film industry, the style might have survived as a natural bridge between the golden age of European film in the late twenties and the "new wave" of the sixties. It does to a certain extent in French "poetic realism" (early Renoir, Carné etc) and in the films of Sacha Guitry but in Germany it died the death while the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians fleeing to the US had no choice but to accept the more banal strictures of US "realist" style.
As is also the case with silent films, later ill-advised "sound" remakes of "mixed style" films are nearly always inferior, and often vastly inferior, to the originals.
Finding his murderer.
morrison-dylan-fan29 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
After watching the interesting Abschied (1930-also reviewed) I took a close look at the two titles Robert Siodmak made in 1931,and found that one had a rather swift runtime, leading to me searching for the murderer.
View on the film:
Detailed in Josh Nelson's audio commentary that after the movie flopped, producer Erich Pommer chopped the runtime for a re-release from 97 to 54 minutes,with all the cut footage looking to now be lost forever.
With the first act appearing to have largely been left intact, from the opening framed shot of Herfort holding a gun to his head, directing auteur Robert Siodmak takes a major leap in ambition for the second "sound" title he had made, Siodmak carves in the Film Noir pessimism which would run across his credits,beaming in ultra-stylised low lighting casting shadows which the camera pans towards to find Herfort hiding away from a would-be assassin.
Looking back at it years later and saying "We (the makers) thought the film was monstrously funny, we spilt our sides whilst writing it,the producer liked it,but the audience didn't."
The laughs that took place off-screen,are mixed on screen into macabre comedy, with Siodmak breaking the limited camera moves of his first sound title with dashing tilts and whip-pans landing on excellent set-pieces which balances the comedic methods used in trying to assassinate Herfort, (a bomb in the pocket) with the Noir fire of a sniper rifle,pushing Herfort nearer to his planned murderer.
Reuniting after the silent No People on Sunday (1930-also reviewed) Billy Wilder is joined by Robert's brother Curt Siodmak and Ludwig Hirschfeld for an adaptation of Jules Vern novel Tribulations of a Chinaman in China which is loaded with snappy funny exchanges of Herfort, (played with an anxious charm by Heinz Ruhmann) searching in desperation for a bugler he hired to put him out of his misery and assassinate him, until he has a luck of the draw and falls in love,leading to Herfort searching for his murderer.
View on the film:
Detailed in Josh Nelson's audio commentary that after the movie flopped, producer Erich Pommer chopped the runtime for a re-release from 97 to 54 minutes,with all the cut footage looking to now be lost forever.
With the first act appearing to have largely been left intact, from the opening framed shot of Herfort holding a gun to his head, directing auteur Robert Siodmak takes a major leap in ambition for the second "sound" title he had made, Siodmak carves in the Film Noir pessimism which would run across his credits,beaming in ultra-stylised low lighting casting shadows which the camera pans towards to find Herfort hiding away from a would-be assassin.
Looking back at it years later and saying "We (the makers) thought the film was monstrously funny, we spilt our sides whilst writing it,the producer liked it,but the audience didn't."
The laughs that took place off-screen,are mixed on screen into macabre comedy, with Siodmak breaking the limited camera moves of his first sound title with dashing tilts and whip-pans landing on excellent set-pieces which balances the comedic methods used in trying to assassinate Herfort, (a bomb in the pocket) with the Noir fire of a sniper rifle,pushing Herfort nearer to his planned murderer.
Reuniting after the silent No People on Sunday (1930-also reviewed) Billy Wilder is joined by Robert's brother Curt Siodmak and Ludwig Hirschfeld for an adaptation of Jules Vern novel Tribulations of a Chinaman in China which is loaded with snappy funny exchanges of Herfort, (played with an anxious charm by Heinz Ruhmann) searching in desperation for a bugler he hired to put him out of his misery and assassinate him, until he has a luck of the draw and falls in love,leading to Herfort searching for his murderer.
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