Solo for Clarinet

Both the male & the female lead in this movie gave brave, nuanced performances.

I had the chance to watch this movie on late night cable and I quickly got attached to it. The intense dramatic performances are the best about this German film. The acting is way better than expected and it totally matches with the powerful scenes.

Good cinematography for crude , disturbing images. Berlin looks dark and mysterious.

Worths a watch. 6/10.

Although my German is sub-standard, I enjoyed this story of an angst-ridden cop. (I understood the significance of the clarinet, but I missed what became of it. Was the evidence lost? If so, did Kominka really want it to be found or did he have mixed feelings about it?) The acting is obviously good, thus making the romance between the detective and his suspect compellingly edgy. There is a wonderful scene in which Kominka (Gotz George) follows his suspect (Corinna Harfouch) to a singles event and finally meets her. Inevitably, she asks him what he does for a living. Because he cannot tell her that he is a homicide investigator, he becomes delightfully evasive. Kominka is distinctly not a kind man. (We see him hire and then beat up a prostitute.) But George brilliantly inhabits this character who is plagued by a failed marriage and assorted demons, and yet is able to fall in love, albeit with a forbidden object. The movie is also graced by dark images of Berlin which are nonetheless appealing to those who have enjoyed that city.

It's a bit ironic that we use to term film Noir in the English-speaking world as the genres roots are more German than French. This is a classic example of the genre worthy of Lang or Pabst, with an angst-ridden German cop investigating a pedophilia-related murder and finding out more about himself than the crime in question. It's got a dark, Brooding quality that you only find in Northern European movies, some scenes of incredible brutality, but it's not totally lacking in faith in human nature. It was also a German who said that those who confront monsters are in danger of becoming monsters themselves (or something like that) and thats as apposite a line to describe this film as any.