User Reviews

Typologically old-style criminal series are almost cabinet-pieces, comparable to stage productions. E.g., although the Marek-Tatort episodes play in Vienna, on seldomly sees more than a river, a house.-facade or a staircase, since practically the whole acting takes places in the criminal investigations office, obviously based on the assumption that criminology is a discipline of the mind, thus requiring contemplation and therefore negligence of everyday's life. A first opening can be found already, e.g., in "Der Kommissar" (1968-). Whenever Kommissar Keller is sick, he is lying in his bed, pampered by his wife, and we enjoy the sight of a German apartment with its precarious internal design of the 60ies. So, typologically seen, "Derrick" and "Old Fox" are older than they should be starting in the 70ies: neither Derrick nor Koester have a private life showing them in their apartments. Also compare the oldest (1970-) with the more modern episodes of "Tatort": There you will recognize a real paradigmatic caesura: In the 90ies, suddenly the detectives and their surrounding start to become human-like, loosing the rest of their naturalistic status of marionettes. They drive minutes long through Munich, leaving their cars, go into stores, through parks, ring the bells of private apartments, we see helicopter shots instead of low-angle car perspectives. Compare Veigl (1972-) with Batic and Leitmayr (1991-, both settled in Munich, and you will see that these twenty years are qualitatively longer then the twenty years in film-depiction of everyday's life, e.g., between the 30ies and the 40ies). In the Schimansky-episodes (1981-), practically the whole story plays in the landscape, although still the focus of narration is on the old-stylish scheme of Good-guy hunts Bad-guy, thus person-centered. The Big Bang comes only with the film referred to by the present comment: "Tango Für Borowksi" (Tatort 761, 4.4.2010): Here, the landscape itself becomes the focus of narration, and it was a truly good idea to engage the great Finnish director Hannu Salonen for this Borowski/Jung-episode. Those scenes where Borowksi suddenly gets - mysteriously? - lost in the eternal Karelian forests, when he suddenly awakes and stumbles - as it seems: only steps distant - into a rondo-like kiosk and meets a modern kind of guardian angel - are simply masterpieces that surpass by far all the Hollywood trash which suffocates us, the reflecting people, more and more.