Who ever has heard about Erich Waschneck. He made 43 films and I only saw one: DREI TAGE ANGST. An unknown gangster film ? Yes. But very funny stuff, made by someone who knew his job well. It was made in 1952 by a former saxon lighting cameraman of the silents born in 1887 and was his before last film. The late Rudolf Platte stars brilliantly in it, who is well known to the earlier generation of German film loving people and was always a little in the shadow of Heinz Rühmann.( Later he played The Hauptmann von Köpenick for TV.) Here Platte plays two characters, a humble master tailor from Hamburg, who gets involved in a jewellery theft in Cologne, because he looks very much like a small time crook, who belongs to the Beppo Brehm bunch, that is also after the bundle of jewels and who are trying to double cross each other. Black and white of cause and with a touch of pre war french comedy. Just great watching Platte hiding in women clothes and making his/her way into a lodgings to get hold of the jewellery hidden inside a huge heating oven. As you may imagine the poor tailor is constantly taken either for the crook either by the police or tall Beppo Brehm or the other way round and everything is so perfectly timed and mixed up you almost start thinking Cary Grant is walking around on high heels. And mind you: Little Cornelia Froboes is doing one of her early appearances in the pictures. The film is mainly studio works full of quick early 50s details and nice sound, but there is a traveling shot in the streets with post war ruins in the background. The director had made it through the Nazi years, but I wonder what his 1940 film is like that carries the title DIE ROTHSCHILDS. We know more about a film called Jud Süss.
Michael Zabel
