News

When they dig it up, what will they find? Fans will want to see this forgotten Deutsch-noir masterpiece. Helmut Käutner’s tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany is a swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen attracts displaced women and dispirited men willing to do what’s necessary to survive. We’ve seem nothing quite like this riveting drama — its sixty-year absence carries a taint of political ‘inconvenience.’ If you like challenging fare like Ace in the Hole and Try and Get Me! you’re going to love it. Both censored and uncensored versions have been restored in excellent quality.

Black Gravel

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1961 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 114, 113 min. / Street Date September 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur,...

Olaf Möller on Black Gravel (Schwarzer Kies) starring Ingmar Zeisberg, Helmut Wildt and Hans Cossy: "This is really Käutner on his realism track."

At the Film Society of Lincoln Center inside the Furman Gallery of the Walter Reade Theater, Olaf Möller, the curator of The Lost Years of German Cinema: 1949–1963, discussed with me the films of Helmut Käutner, including his Hamlet adaptation, Der Rest Ist Schweigen (The Rest Is Silence), starring Hardy Krüger, Der Traum Von Lieschen Müller (The Dream Of Lieschen Mueller) and Bildnis Einer Unbekannten (Portrait Of An Unknown Woman).

Oe Hasse, Lilli Palmer and Peter van Eyck in Harald Braun's The Glass Tower (Der Gläserne Turm)

Wolfgang Staudte's The Fair (Kirmes) starring Juliette Mayniel, and Harald Braun's The Glass Tower (Der Gläserne Turm) with Lilli Palmer, Oe Hasse and Peter van Eyck, along with Käutner's Redhead (Die Rote) with Gert Fröbe and Ruth Leuwerik,...