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Welcome to the projection booth.

I'm your host.

Mike White joined me once again as mister Andrew Nettie.

Thanks for having me.

Also back in the booth is Ms Sam Digan.

Hello, we continue November twenty twenty five with a look at Helmut With a look at Helmut Koitner's film Black Gravel.

The film tells the story of a city outside of a US military base in Germany, where Robert Neihardt played by Helmut Wilt, is a black marketeer who runs into an old flame inga played by ingmar Zeisberg, who is now married to a major on the base.

The film explores people on the fringes and a dark, gripping tale that the Oberhausen critics called the worst achievement by an established director in nineteen sixty one.

We will be spoiling this film as we go along, So if you don't want anything ruined, to turn off the podcast and come back after you've seen the movie.

Maybe just take a break afterwards, try to get out of a depressed funk that you'll be in after you see this movie.

We'll still be here, We'll hold your hands, We'll give you a hug.

You're probably going to need it.

Andrew, when was the first time you saw Black Gravel?

And what did you think?

Our first one to say the ober hous And critics can go and get their fucking shinebox on this one, because this is an absolute knockout film.

I think I first saw it when Radiance released it as part of a World Noir box set.

I mean, I'm living in Berlin at the moment, and I was planning on my move to Berlin, and I was starting to try and watch more German cinema, particularly more German crime cinema, and I'd sort of watched a few earlier films, which we can talk about that later, in the sort of immediate nineteen forties nineteen fifties, and I was really impressed by this film.

So it takes place in the nineteen sixties, so it's not a it's not a Troman film, it's not a rubble film, and it's not an early sort of German postwar noir.

It's set in the early nineteen sixties when the economy is starting to take off and technically things are going really well, but everyone's still incredibly miserable and living under the threat of nuclear war.

And it's such a pitch black, per effect noir that I just I was absolutely flawed, Yeah, absolutely flawed by this film.

And I mean later on I sort of realized that Carltner, Bernard sorry, Helmet Cartner, the director, he had a complicated history and there were complicated politics around him and Germany, but he really knocked it out of the park with this one.

And it's still really really unknown.

I mean, I even talked to people here in Berlin in Germany who pride themselves on having having had a really good expanse of knowledge about crime cinema and German cina in particular, and very few of them have seen Black Gravel.

It's a terrific film.

I'm I'm incredibly impressed by it, and I think this is the fourth watch I've done on it for the Projection booth, and I still found it fascinating.

And Sam, how about yourself.

I actually watched it for the first time for this episode because, like Andrew pointed out, it really falls in this kind of in between zone.

So if you're somebody like me who's written a lot about World War Two era German cinema, cinema in the forties, which are those rubble films, or that's the period when those rubble films fall, like up to the very early fifties, and I've also written a lot about New German cinema which starts after this.

So this in between zone is kind of uncharted territory for me.

But this is just amazing, like he said, pitch black, but also so incredibly beautiful, like the shot composition, the really incredible kind of expressionistic lighting, the bar sequences, Like there's nothing about this that I didn't love.

I just love how well this story comes together, and that I mean, the metaphors play throughout so much of this.

I mean, we begin this movie with the death of a dog and bearing that dog under this square.

The murder of a dog, murder of a dog.

Yes, and don't worry, folks, it's not a real dog.

It's pretty obvious that it's a big stuffed animal type of thing when they throw it into the pit and you can see when it's laying there with the rock next to it, you can see the dog's eyes moving, so it's just laying there.

It's a well trained dog.

Don't sweat it it, you know, you hear the little yelping things, which is always rough for anybody who cares anything about animals.

But yes, there is a dog quote unquote death at the beginning of this, but don't sweat it.

But that goes through this whole movie and just plays so well with this, this whole idea of who knows that the dog is dead, that our main character has the collar from the dog.

He kind of uses that to parlay back into the life of this former flame of his who shows up.

He just kind of happens upon her on the road.

She and her husband, this major are broken down, This whole idea of bearing things, bearing the past, the big pit that they have at this air base where they throw all of these things in here.

I mean, it just plays so well into everything when it comes to the murder, or well, it's not even a murder later on, it's more of an accident that happens and really could have been avoided as far as some of the badness that goes on in this movie, but it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

I mean, it's that whole thing that we talk about with film noir, and I keep wondering, like, is this a true film noir?

Is this out of the date range?

I don't really care.

I'm not going to split hairs when it comes to this.

It's so dark and there's so many bad things that happen, and it does fall into that whole idea of You're fucked at the beginning of it, You're even more fucked at the.

End of it.

And the end of this movie is incredibly dark, though not the release version, which just you know, kind of ends our main character driving out into the fog.

We don't see what happens with inga.

Yeah, everything's fine, but we'll definitely talk about those different versions of this as we go along.

But yeah, I love how the Dog plays through this whole thing and just keeps coming back, and the idea of these secrets from the past.

I mean, we were talking about Germany nineteen sixty one.

We're talking about a occupation by the Americans inside of Germany.

What this movie reminded me so much of was the Japanese films like Pigs and Battleships or even like The battles Without Honor Humanity.

This whole idea of the occupying force of the Americans in the countries that they fought in World War Two, and just the muck that they make of everything.

It's one of those openings where I first assumed that killing the Dog would just be kind of setting a really downbeat tone, but the fact that the dog keeps coming back and the way that the gravel that the main character is essentially stealing and selling on the black market.

The way that that also functions in the plot, like the script is just brilliant, Like they thought everything through.

Yeah, it's a bit like a Swiss watch, a well made Swiss watch, isn't it.

The whole thing links together?

What I going back to those comments, and I was thinking about other films because I mean, I remember I watched The Lost One nineteen fifty one.

Yeah, with that, Yeah, Peter Laurey's only directorial, only directorial outing.

There's another really good one by a director called Wolfgang Starter called The Murderers Are amongst Us That was nineteen forty.

Six, a great one.

Yeah, and then Roses for the Prosecutor nineteen fifty nine, and they all deal I mean, actually Roses for the Prosecutors a bit later, but those earlier ones they deal with.

You know, Germany has just been completely smashed to pieces.

It's everyone's traumatized.

You know.

What usually happens is that someone will bump but you can't get away from it.

And someone will bump into someone on the street who they've either witnessed do something terror the war, or they might have done an atrocity with or just something horrific in the war that they're trying to sort of escape from, and this chance encounter leads them, leads them back into an association and a whole of things.

They just don't want to have to deal with that.

As you say, they're sort of bearing, and I think in a sense Black Gravel is very much like that.

So there's this is Robert the truck driver who's got this And I love the way that Cartner sort of sketches these character backstories very gently.

Like Roberts, he's driving gravel as part of this big expansion of a US airstrip on this US air base, and they're also, of course there's this whole black market trade in the gravel.

He's been a pow, has been a soldier who was wounded in the war.

You don't really find out a lot about it.

He's on a road one night, stops at this car and this car is driven by this American major, and he discovers that the American major's German wife, as you say, is Inger, who again very lightly sketched background.

She was I think a prostitute during the you know, in the immediate post war period, although it's not really clear, but there's some dark things in her life, and she's married this American and Inga and Robert used to have this relationship.

Then they basically they've drifted apart.

Now they've met each other again on this road outside this US air base in nineteen sixty one.

And technically everyone should be happy because the worst of that fifties period is behind it.

It's stable, the economy is starting to take off.

We've comrade out Ardenauer, who's does you know, arch conservative Chancellor of Germany has done a good job of bearing any kind of effort to hunt down Nazis.

Yeah, to his own benefit.

That's another thing that's buried in this film.

You know, that's another thing that's been bare it in Germany.

So and things, and we've forgotten the war quote unquote, and things are moving forward, but of course you can't forget it.

And there's all these new things that are at play here, these new alienations, the fact that we're still not happy, we're still miserable, that the occupation.

We're really fucking shitty with these occupiers, the fact that we rely on them for money and they rely on us for alcohol, sex, and entertainment and we hate this relationship.

And also this thing which you really noticed throughout the film, this constant roar of fighter jets from the nearby US air base, which is even when I think one scene where Robert and Inger are having sex for the first time after this very difficult period, sort of meeting each other again and she wants to stay with the American and he wants to sort of sleep with her, and they basically make love again, and you can hear the jets going overhead the entire time, and it's like this threat.

So they've just come out of one war and they're just about to be another war potentially, and this war will be even more potentially devastating.

And I mean, of course, this is happening at a time when, as you say, and as I say, Ardenow has taken over, he's in charge, he's it's all on board with fighting communism.

The Nazis aren't the enemy anymore, it's the Communists.

And I think Ardenow has just agreed to place nuclear weapons on German soil, so there's also that going on.

So it's it's really it's it takes those earlier tropes from those earlier German Noirs, but it sort of gives them this early sixties makeover that I just love.

I found it really fascinating to watch a film where the Cold War is so central, but like it's not what you would think of as a more traditional Cold War film, Like we have American military personnel, and we do have a CIA agent, but the whole thing is this tormented, romantic melodrama.

And you know, as we keep saying noir or at least kind of post noir, but the fact that we're seeing how the Cold War in process is affecting these working class, everyday people and they're not spies the main characters, They're just people trying to survive.

I think that was maybe my favorite part of this, is like how present the political themes are without being super central to the narrative in more obvious ways.

It's the texture, the way that count my textures so much stuff.

I mean, we'll get on shore, we'll get onto the claims about anti Semitism in the film and all of that, but the way that he just liars all this alienation and depression and tension that's in German society without having to construct these big, ornate signposts, you know, it's just their going through the film, every single fiber of the film.

The fatalism, it's just sort of from the top down, like from the dog being killed to the discussion of bringing the warheads in, and the fact that like even the American character, the husband is not like he has some conventional kind of American stereotypes, but like even he isn't really happy either.

He seems to love his wife, but spends a lot of his screen time talking about how dealing with the military is a pain in the ass and he wants to get transferred, and like, it's not a surprise that this movie got a little bit of a censorship slap back, because it's really confrontational, especially from a director who's mostly known for making like mainstream literary adaptations and that kind of cinema of quality stuff that the new Wave was always complaining about.

It so reminds me sam of when we're talking about Jean Pierre Melville and just the way that the young Turks kept slapping down like, oh no, we distance ourselves, like that's you know, Melville, Renois, any of these great filmmakers where they're just like, no, no, that's old fashion.

Now we're the new flavor.

You should be paying attention to us, and these oberhusing critics just basically doing the same thing.

It's like, oh, Quitner, he's been making movies since the forties.

Ah, forget this guy.

He's got nothing to say.

And I know Quitner was also kind of hurting from he went over to the US, you know, kind of all like Old Fools and Renoir and these guys made two movies over there.

I think he had a three picture contract, but he never finished up the third picture.

I think he did not have a good time when he went to the US.

And this might be yeah, exactly, especially these I did.

I did, but that was ten years ago, but you were on vacation.

But you know, he comes back and then this is one of the first movies that he makes, is Black Gravel, And yeah, the anti American sentiment that goes through this is you know, palatable, and I kind of love it.

And yeah, the whole idea of major gains.

He just seems to want inga as arm candy at these different events that he has to go to and uses what becomes the mystery.

I suppose the murder, the accident that happens uses that whole cover up as a basically a bargaining chip with inga to be like, Okay, this didn't happen, and you're never going to mention this again, and you're going to just settle down with me and I don't want to hear any mention of this Robert character and just lays it all out like you are now in debt to me, like I have the keys to your future.

So you better just like you know, straighten up and fly right, because now you're my property like you were my property before.

You know, you're playing the great housewife.

You're putting together all of the stuff in our apartment, the same apartment that looks the same as all of the other apartments on this Air Force base.

But yeah, you better start playing by Marie Roles now, and really shows his true colors at that moment in the film, very late in the film, because before he's kind of like the benign like, oh, don't tell the major and we're going to go behind his back and he's not going to mind any of this stuff.

He's never going to find out.

Don't ask, don't tell, as they say in some military circles.

And then boom, once that happens when she admits what is going on.

Then he's like, oh, well, this is my opportunity.

That part of it is crazy, especially because of how benign he seems.

It also ties back into these discussions that Robert and Inga have where Robert says to her, this is just a different form of prostitution, like you are selling yourself to him for economic security and comfort.

And I'm guessing that that probably was not a popular take in the early sixties, with its very kind of anti marriage sentiment and the fact that to me, their relationship as a married couple starts to kind of hinge on this scene where she comes home.

They've been to this party where he gets really drunk and they're playing these ridiculous war games.

But there's this really kind of depressing sequence where they're both drunkenly getting ready for bed, and she's looking at herself in the mirror taking off her makeup in a parallel to a scene of Robert doing the same exact thing.

It's that sort of classic film noir looking at yourself in the mirror, questioning everything about your life, choices, and about who you are as a person.

But while she's getting ready, on the verge of tears.

He's going off on this whole monologue that makes it very clear that he is just talking at her and she's just kind of this body who's there as a wife, and he's not actually expecting any kind of conversational response, doesn't care what she thinks.

She's just like a placeholder.

And I think it's interesting how though he does seem so benign, you can start to see little signs of the shift in their relationship, or maybe not the shift, but like the truth of their relationship build in the second half of the film.

So much of this movie is about artifice.

I mean, the idea of the Robert has well, he's got his place, which is above a brothel, and he's got that great bedroom where he's got the poster and I don't know who that poster is of.

It almost looks like Brigite Bardoux or somebody.

But he's got so good above his bed.

He basically kind of lives with Ellie, who's a prostitute.

But he's got this hideaway that he tricks inga into coming to later on, and that's filled.

It almost feels like a clubhouse or something.

He's got all these posters, he's got this looks like a movie poster with a cowboy on it.

He's got this Quincy Jones thing.

I'm trying to remember.

There's another musician that he's got kind of poster of there as well.

But he's got this fake church that's outside, and he says that he painted it from a calendar.

He just like likes this thing, and that so reminds me of the other church that is in here.

There's a church scene where the priest is talking about Columbus and discovery and all these things.

And at the end of that scene you see that the church is a multipurpose church that the altar turns around for the Protestant ceremony that's about to take place.

They've got the Catholic version and then the Protestant version, and it's all just on like a I believe Sam.

It reminds me of a lazy Susan the way that it turns there.

I don't know if you've ever seen a lazy Susan.

Now, please please describe one.

I can tell you all about that, or you can watch the commentary for Black Emmanuel and find out all about a lazy Susan.

But yeah, I love this whole idea of like how fick everything is that it is just an image like a front of a church, or it's the image of the altar that just switches around when you need it to.

Everything in this film, though, every every relationship in this film though, is transactional.

That's one of the most incredibly dark things about it is that everyone is out for something.

Everyone is trying to chisel something out of someone Everyone is using someone else, and Robert and Inger are doing that as well, and the Americans doing it.

And then there's the on the meta analysis, the American government are doing it to the German government, and also the German government to getting something out of it as well because they're getting money and they think they're getting security and US protection.

So everyone is getting something out of this and there's there's so many I mean, I was thinking about this film and the film that it really remind me of.

There are no similarities at all about in terms of plots or content, but this film so it got embroiled in I think up from the perspective of twenty twenty five are completely put up anti antisemitism, claims of antisemitism, But there are so many aspects of this film that I when I watched it, I think I could have been banned for that.

It could have been banned for that.

It could have been banned for that, like the sex in it, and the depiction of sex and the whole is just amazing.

And the film it reminds me of is Wake in Fright so by Ted Kotschoff in nineteen seventy one, which bombed really badly in Australia and Australians.

That was not an image of Australia that anyone in Australia wanted to see in nineteen seventy one.

And I think it's similar with Black Gravel.

You know, no one in Germany wanted to see this caustic depiction of Germans based having this cynical transactional relationship with each other, selling themselves to the Americans for money, the anti Semitism aspects of it, the reliance on this US base that this small German town has none of it is jives with where Conrad Ardenauer and the you know, the German economic miracle is going in nineteen sixty one.

So there's so many levels of which it could have been banned.

I think, oh, it seems inevitable.

I mean that whole character.

She doesn't get a huge looking But so Robert has got this wants to rekindle this thing with Inger, but he's also got this existing relationship with this prostitute at the Atlantic, which is the kind of bar coum brothel that he lives on top of.

And I was struck watching it this time.

When so when Robert stops on the roadside and sees the Major's car has broken down, and he thinks, I can I can make a quick ten bucks from this.

I'll agree to toe it into town for ten dollars.

And then and he realizes christ this the Major is married to this woman.

I had a major thing with Inger how many years agoing On and Inger and Robert, and Inger basically says, so he tows the car, and Inger basically says, look, do you mind if I ride in the front with Roberts and Robert and Inger are in the front of Robert's truck and in between them is this drunk prostitute Inger, and she's just completely she's sort of slumping all over the place.

And they actually have the first serious conversation that they have in how many years with Ellie slumped on Inger's shoulder and Robert just saying, I don't worry about her.

She's you know, she's she's used to this.

Don't don't, don't don't you know it's so caustic.

And dark, or Ellie.

This definitely reminds me of this period that I think comes So if you think about traditional film noir as ending in like nineteen fifty seven, nineteen fifty eight, nineteen fifty nine, there are kind of this wave of movies that come in the late fifties to the mid sixties that all do kind of similar things to Black Gravel, and how the sexuality is depicted, like a lot of those Robert Hossain movies in France, You've got things like Private Property in the US, which seems like all of a sudden they're ramping the sexuality up.

And I know that you see it in horror movies too, where there's suddenly more nudity and the suggestion of even with something like Psycho, the suggestion of someone.

Being naked in the shower.

The way that all of those movies use the sexuality as something that's transactional, I think is especially grim.

And here you just feel so bad for her because everyone treats her the same, and for a while, I think, kind of like the military husband, she's this benign, sort of benign figure in the background, where like we don't see too much of her having outbursts.

But in the second half of the movie, when she tries to make him jealous and talks about how she's gonna go to Canada with this other guy who no one in the movie likes this other guy because he's kind of a weasel, And she talks about this other guy like, you know, there's just something different about him.

But it's kind of an echo of Inga's relationship with her husband, where it's like, I'm gonna get together with this person because they can offer me some financial stability and get me out of this bad situation.

And so I think you can also see these kinds of relationships echoing in the patterns of each other.

But we haven't talked yet about the people.

Who get killed in the movie.

Is this couple.

It's a young soul and his even younger a young American soldier and his even younger German girlfriend who everyone around them acknowledges like they are genuinely in love and trying to get married and this one relationship is maybe not transactional, and so because it isn't, there's the implication that their petition to get a marriage license, which was something that you actually had to apply for if you were an American soldier working on a base in an occupied territory.

Same deal in Japan.

You learn later on that their marriage application was going to be denied.

And it's like, why why.

Is this universe so hostile to the two people who are genuinely in love.

Their moment in the car when Robert sees them and comes up and I guess he's been talking about fixing Bill's cars.

Bill and Annie.

I think it is when he's been talking about fixing Bill's car, and that becomes a little bit of a plot point later after this terrible accident, and like I said, it's not a murder.

They are.

Robert is stealing some gravel from the work site, which he continuously does.

He's kind of a black marketeer.

And the other guy that you were talking about that is going to go to Canada with Ellie, he's his partner.

He's Robert's partner, and this whole thing.

He is the one who can stamp the book and basically like fix the papers and do all this stuff so they can take this gravel off and sell it for their profit.

And they're just continuously like siphoning off a little bit.

You know, they're good fellas.

They're just make a little couple extra bucks in the side kind of thing, like that's their life.

And Robert is just continuously a scoff law.

He's going to do whatever he needs to do in order to make a few bucks.

And at one point Inga finds out, oh, there's going to be a basically a sting operation.

They're going to find out more about this gravel stuff.

They're going to arrest the person that's stealing this.

So she runs out and manages to track down Robert in his truck and saves the day.

Hey this is you know, something bad is going to happen.

You need to turn around kind of thing.

And as they are making this turn, they accidentally kill Annie and Bill, who are out on the same road that night listening to their transistor radio from Japan, which I love that little detail in there, and there's a song playing.

What's it Fraeulein Schmidt.

I think it is to find out that Helmut Koitner actually wrote the lyrics to that song, which I found to be interesting too.

That song plays throughout them, It's always playing in the Atlantic tu box.

It haunts them to the point where that's the last song that you hear in the in the movie.

And I love that with the jets going overhead, yes, and the.

Echoing that it does, like this song starts one way and starts to begin to echo.

But the murder quote unquote in this movie is not a murder at all.

It's an accident.

But then it's the biggest thing in the world to cover up this accident, and again we're going to bury this stuff.

We're going to bury them under this gravel just so that they're out of the way and we don't have to worry about it.

And then it becomes the whole thing of did they run away to East Germany?

Did they you know, what's going on with this couple?

Did they elope?

Did they go back to America?

What's happening with these two?

And becomes the big mystery of it and just starts to get bigger and bigger the more that people don't talk about this thing that actually happened, Like they could have come clean.

It was a simple accident, but nope, we have to cover it up.

Then there's this thing with the Americans going on.

There's problems with the runway, so we have to get this investigation in to find out what's wrong with and they've got some sort of sonar thing going on the gravel, and then Robert is worried, on god, they're going to find the bodies I've buried.

And then, as you say, when when the major finds out about it, he's then worried about out what's going to happen.

So the whole thing just becomes this draying that everyone circles around, and it just gets deeper and deeper and deeper, and they all end up having everyone ends up having to compromise themselves, you know, around around this murder.

It's also incredible that it really is three overlapping investigations, like the two people who are missing, the runway problems, and also the problem of who is stealing this gravel and selling it on the black market.

It's like they're all so intimately connected that it gives you this real sense of paranoia as you follow Robert as the protagonist, because he's involved with all three of these different investigations in a sense, and when people start questioning him, it's like he doesn't know which one he should be responding to.

But I do think it's interesting the way that the accident itself based stems from sex.

Like the reason that Bill and Annie are out in the middle of the woods at night in the dark is the implication is that they've snuck off to listen to the radio, which is pretty strongly implied that they're actually just out there having sex.

I don't think it's an implication.

I mean it's I think we see.

That, yeah, I think she yeah, she says to him, no, not here.

But then hours later they're still in the woods and are just starting to leave, so it's like, yeah, okay, we we put together what happened.

But the fact that he hits them because he's starting to kiss inga who's finally put her head on his shoulder, it just no one can catch a break.

I agree with what you said earlier too, Sam about I think that's something of not in a particularly academic or inform way, but just from exposure to watching so many of these films.

I agree Late Noir so La Noir from the sort of late fifties to the early sixties.

It just takes the gloves off on so many levels in a way that you know, even earlier no I just doesn't do.

And sex is obviously one of the areas, the cynicism and the sex late of Late Noire which you see, and this film sort of falls into that sort of category I think, I mean, because that's the and that's the other thing that would have just gone down like an absolute lead balloon in Germany in nineteen sixties.

One is this is this notion that so there's this big American air base, there's this tiny, peaceful town called Sonnen, and it's basically through the expansion of the air base, this town has sort of turned into this giant sort of R and R brothel.

We see German women fraternizing with American soldiers all the time.

And there's that great scene at one point where the father comes into the bar of the Atlantic and hauls he finds his daughter dancing with the Gei and just hauls are out, basically just screaming at her get out of here.

You know, this is not a place for you.

There's this really interesting two thousand documentary called Stepping Out, which was basically made by this German woman who I haven't met, and it was essentially about sort of a semi documentary about this woman's erotic forays through US Army clubs and barracks in Frankfurt.

And this is two thousand and especially especially with Black.

GI, that sounds amazing.

Yeah, it is amazing and absolute outraw that this film caused even amongst progressive left wing circles.

So it was still a hot issue in two thousand, So you can imagine what it must have been like to depict this in the early nineteen sixties, because it's the Atlantic is it's not sort of it's not a brothel, but it's kind of a bar where German women and GI's meet and obviously dance and also sex is negotiated, and then there's rooms on the premises and stuff like that.

As you sort of say, the Americans are also miserable, Like there's all these scenes of the Americans basically sitting in the bar just being incredibly depressed about having to be in Germany.

And it also shows the racial tension in the US Army because there's that scene where there's a bunch of Black GI sitting at a table in the Atlantic and a whole lot of white guys come in and see the black guys go and go, Now, let's go somewhere else.

We don't want to be in a bar with these guys.

So I mean, I'm so glad that you mentioned that, because nobody in the reviews of the movie talked about that at all.

And I was just like, that's a huge scene for me, these guys coming in and it's all in the background, like we're supposed to be paying attention to something else.

But you see all those white guys come in, see the black guys there, and they're just like yep, nope, and they turn around and leave, and it's like, yeah, nineteen sixty one, yep.

Countnor doesn't, as I say, doesn't make it into a big it's just woven into the texture.

Another thing that's just woven into the texture of this film.

Yeah.

It's interesting to see this as a precursor to some of the films that Fastpender would make about a decade later that explore similar subject matter, especially his use of black American characters and gis, and even with something like Pioneers in Ingolstadt, which is all about these sex workers who get involved with these soldiers who are there to just build a bridge and are also bored and miserable.

That was transgressive when he made those films in the late sixties and into the seventies.

And so this coming from this like established mainstream director, I bet people's heads were exploding.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And on top of that, I mean, it's so it's a bad town noir in the sense that it's a it's a town where everything is corrupt, everything is facile.

It's a truck and noir.

You know, it's a really it's a it's a great truck on noirt.

It's interesting with I didn't I didn't get a chance to watch all the films, a lot of films by Kautener, but I did watch I did watch Port of Freedom.

Well, how is it look?

It's we should say this, So I think you were one of you alluded to the fact that Kauntner basically stayed in is one of the few prominent German directors that stayed in Germany during the Nazis, and he made films under the Nazis, And I think that was one of the other things that the Oberhausen group were kind of eluding, you know.

I think not not to defend people who stayed.

I mean, there were people like Paps who did, but I think he and perhaps are some of the directors who stayed and kept making films that did not they were not Nazi propaganda films.

I was going to say that if you and so my understanding is that a lot of a lot of Countner's films actually they really pissed off the Nazis.

And Port of Freedom is in nineteen forty four really bizarre film watching it today about this group of what's that film where the three American sailors have an R and R weekend in New York.

You know, Gene Kelly's in it, and it's kind of like a downbeat version of that, these sailors having they're in Hamburg and there's all these amazing scenes of Hamburg nightlife.

It's totally bizarre because.

The town or anchors away.

I think it's on the town, but there's no mention of the war in this entire film.

It's less completely zero.

It's kind of bizarre, and it's there's no sense because by nineteen forty four, the Allies had basically reduced Hamburg to rubble.

So there's no sense.

Also that you know, most of the town is in ruins, so it's it's a really I mean, of course it was made these these these films that Count and the made for the Nazis or made under the Nazis, were designed to entertain people.

Yeah, exactly like that.

But I'm just saying, in twenty twenty five, it is really weird to watch this film.

But that really I can't remember his name of but name was, but the head of German Germany's navy, Donnits, I think his name was Admiral Donnets, complained, I think to Goebels personally about this film because he was really pissed off about this depiction of these German merchant seamen and this loose life in Hamburg and drinking in Hamburg bars and like that.

He didn't think that.

So, as you say, Sam, even though Count was staying, he's still making these quite subversive films that are also kind of pissing off the Nazis as well.

But of course all those nuances are lost in the sort of the tumult of the sixties and the rise of the rise of the New Left, and a whole lot of this sort of stuff, you.

Know, It's so frustrating though, because it's like, yes, you don't want to say, sure, I stayed in Germany and kept making movies under the Nazis, Like that seems terrible for many reasons.

But I think the reality is that under totalitarianism or fascism, not everyone can leave, not everyone can afford to leave.

And I think a lot of artists and filmmakers and creative people who did leave it was sort of a you're damned if you're do, You're damned if you do, damned if you don't type of situation.

And the same thing happened and occupied France, where like if someone left later on, they were attacked for leaving and not sticking it out and trying to fight.

And sometimes if people left and went to Hollywood, they just had a fucking miserable time.

Like I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, but when you think about the people who returned from the US, like Peter Laure making The Lost One in the early fifties, Robert syadmac coming back in the late forties, those films were so gloomy and miserable, full of all these lonely characters who can't find anyone to communicate with.

So it's like, yeah, maybe politically it's a better move to go to Hollywood, but like, is it really a better move?

And also Countener made I think it's is it sixty one films?

I think he directed I think sixty one films and fifty nine of those as he was also writing.

And so he's got a huge filmography which I haven't even got an even scratched day, and even having nicked the surface of it, it's like, so this, you know, so this guy, and I mean, so he's canned, and he kind of gets lost sort of black gravel, and we can talk we should probably talk about the anti Semitism stuff.

But so black gravel kind of gets buried hah in by the critic, by the critics and by everyone else.

And he goes on to do things, and he goes into Cantner, goes on to make TV, and he continues his career, but his career and then he's what the critics don't sort of bury on black gravel.

New Germans, the New German cinema are basically saying, oh, look, you're an old guy.

Now you get out of the way.

Where're coming.

So he's kind of kind of falls away after that, but it has a real, real filmography there that is rife for rediscovery.

And that's again NodD into another thing that you're saying, Sam, that's a complaint that a lot of people I know here in Berlin have about things like Deutscha Kinemattak and things like that.

It's either the Weimar era or it's new German cinema.

And then and there's a good decade and a half of film there which really is kind of lost, and Countner's in that lost decade and a half of cinema.

That's really right, I think for reappraisal.

Yeah, I mean, even if you think about something like the German crime films, which I think people are a little bit more aware of than these crime movies, even those are still hard to get a hold of in English language friendly releases.

There aren't that many restorations.

It's just this period that I don't know, it definitely kind of got lost, especially I would say from the late thirties onwards to the early seventies, like genre cinemas barely being made.

It's so strange.

So there's the Rubbel films, Am I asked, starting to get a bit of a bit of recognition.

As you say, there's the crime films, heapes of other crime films that were being produced.

There's those he films.

Those are strange, homeled, those sort of weird films set in rural.

In villages and mountains, And it kind of reminds me of the way that in the fifties and sixties.

And early seventies, the way that some Japanese artists and filmmakers start to flirt with this idea of this idea traditional pre war Japan.

That's what the Heimat films are.

It's like, let's imagine this domestic paradise where we're all living in a wholesome village in the Alps.

But I do think there is a nod to that in Black Gravel with his cabin, because it's like he has this secret hideaway that doesn't look like the rest of the town.

It looks like it could be aside from like you know, maybe some of the posters inside it could be straight out of a Heimat film, and the fact that he has that church painted.

There's a scene where he says to her, like when they're talking about her apartment, and how as you mentioned, everything is just sort of bland and generic and this very kind of middle class, affluent sameness.

He's like, remember when we were in Heidelberg and the view that we had there, and like how distinctive it was and how real it felt.

And Heidelberg, which is incredibly beautiful if you've never been there, also has similar.

Views of like all these old buildings and churches.

And universities, and so it seems like this to me anyway, the cabin and the painting of the church, it's a little bit of a nod to that idea of idealized traditional German village life, like without the occupation and the war and you know, urban culture.

Can we just forget for a moment that you know, the entire country was laid waste to during the war, and you know that's what which is what those Heimat films are.

They are very strange films, but I mean again kind of an amnesia by a lot of German film critics because the crimes the Heymat films we just let we just we won't talk about that.

That's just sort of genre trash that was sort of banged out, banged out in the fifties to keep people entertained.

But Cartner is right, and I think he actually made a couple of pseudo Pimot films as well too.

I think some of hist and my period period film.

Well, this is the second time we've felt about quite nir before Sam, because we talked about the Apple Fell from nineteen eight, which did happen so strange, also very strange.

And you remember that the Satan character basically played a Nazi officer in that he had the swashtika and he had the uniform everything.

So yeah, that was very pointed when it came to that.

And yeah, we should talk about the anti semitism in here, because there were a few changes that were made to this film after the charge of anti semitism, and they even changed the ending of the film, even though that had nothing to do with the one Jewish character that is prominent in here, which is the owner of the brothel, and that was I believe offensive to some people that a concentration camp survivor would go on to run the brothel, would run the Atlantic Club.

And it sounds like he's got a agreement with a former Nazi that he bought his barn and turned it into this and that former Nazi character is the one who well, even the Jewish character throws out a few things, like he talks about a yid from Vienna, but it's like, yeah, he's making fun of himself pretty much.

But then there is one very pointed scene that happens in the brothel itself where the German guy is playing an old marching song, though it sounds a lot like Glory, Glory, Hallelujah.

Did we take that from this marching song or did the marching or did they take that for the marching song?

It's very odd, but he's playing this and the Americans and other people in the bar are complaining, you know, hey, can you lay off?

Because it sounds like he's just playing it over and over again and reliving his glory day.

He's talking about bearing the past again.

And when the proprietor comes up and it's just like, hey man, you know, knock it off.

That's when he calls him a dirty jew and then smashes I believe it's Robert smashes the actual jukebox, and that when you see the proprietor turn off the jukebox, you see the numbers tattooed on his arm, and that I guess was very offensive.

This whole thing about calling him a dirty Jew.

Seeing the numbers all that was what really, you know, first laid some charges against this movie and gave it a bad reputation, whereas I see it as not anti semitic at all.

It feels like the character's anti Semitic, not the film.

It's a really telling instance of what's going on in this period where the way that Germany and I think a lot of Europe and a lot of the United States wants to deal with the Holocaust is to just pretend that it didn't exist, because you even get I don't know, someone like kind of a Rent, Holocaust survivor writes a book about basically about the Holocaust, how it is possible, how it happened, and gets death threats, hate mail from lots of different kinds of people, but especially from other Jewish people because a Rent is Jewish, and I think what you really see throughout the sixties and the seventies and Fastpender got in trouble for this too because of this play, that he was involved with any depiction of nuanced Jewish characters, or Jewish characters who are maybe unsavory or who are also capable of exploiting other people.

Is just like no one can handle it.

And so I think having this brothel owner character not be this kind of stereotypical victim angelic figure would have been way too much for the censor board in the early sixties, even though we're not even fully getting to a lot of the Holocaust trials yet, like this is just before them.

The movie comes out in April of sixty one, I believe there's the premiere of it, and it's the same month as the Ekman Trials.

It's about six months before the beginning of the building of the Berlin Wall.

I knew that sixty one was a big year.

Okay, so he's still like he's writing the script and starting production before that happens.

It's important, I think, to know the script and the film get passed by the senses.

It's not the sensors that bring up this anti Semitism charge.

It's a sort of prominent Jewish citizen in Germany who brings it up, and the charge gets dismissed everyone basically, really, I means Cartner moves very quickly exercises the scene from the film.

Basically he said, look, this is not supposed to be anti Jewish, it's actually anti German.

Actually it's actually it's actually it's actually criticizing our own past.

It's not truly sizing Jewish people, so it's not the census who do that.

And then the critics hate it anyway, so it's so it's a sort of it's all wobbly fight already.

After that anti Semitism charge charge, it gets edited, gets edited quite heavily from that scene, and then you know, the critics sort of past it.

We have decades of separation here.

But I don't understand how you could watch this and see the sequences with the black American soldiers and the scene with the Jewish brothel owner and think that this is a movie that has like specifically targeted racism in it.

It's targeting racism culturally, like it's it's.

Not siding with any of that.

And the scene that I think underscores this the most is the absolutely insane church sermon where during the mass he talks about Columbus, and Coyner must have done this on purpose, because if he had some understand of racism and America and colonialism and things like that, the speech about Columbus is basically like, here's this guy who went along and discovered things, and if you have this mindset, every day can be Columbus Day for you.

And it's a speech being delivered to American gis, so it has to be translated for Robert.

But it's so disturbing because it's like thinking about Columbus now, like, yeah, he's a guy who kicked off a genocide that basically wiped out an entire continent of indigenous people.

But we should use him as our role model while we're occupying Germany as a military forces.

There's a lot happening here.

We're under the chancellorship of Comrad Adnow he's actually a chancellor of Germany from nineteen forty nine to nineteen sixty three.

Yeah, he was there forever, and I think he's one of the people who really attracted the ire of the group that would become known as the New German Cinema Directors because he, I think, was what they saw as being totalitarianism light He just sort of replaced fascism with capitalism, and anyone who disagreed or challenged the German economic miracle that was developing, he sort of tried to silence in a variety of ways that would just get worse throughout the sixties.

But there's also a line in here that kind of nods to that, where Robert says to Inga when she's begging him, just turn yourself in.

They'll Noah was an accident.

You won't get punished.

It won't be that big of a deal.

And he says to her, justices only for people in power.

And it's like who plastic film noir, classic film noir, but also very post World War Two.

Anaw oversees that switch from without getting into the details of it too much denazification to anti communism.

So and that's I mean under the tutelage obviously of the of the of the Americans of Washington, who's very very keen to go look now, stop, don't give us.

Your Nazi scientists, and then we will never mention it again.

And the Iikman trial is a huge international news story.

And my understanding is also what's happening is that now that's when Arden now kind of does this deal with the israelis going?

Well, look, I mean if you or the German state gond doesn't deal with Israel, go, which is continuous, you just soft pedal on a lot of this stuff.

A bit.

We don't want too much of this.

We understand you've got to try trial, you know, we've got you've got to try Iikman, but we don't want this.

And in return you've got our political and military support.

And you can also just you know, fine stream Nazis and execute them as you see fit.

Yeah, so just don't tell anyone.

So this is completely against that.

This is completely know this is this runs totally so because and part of that ard.

Now, the thing is, we're just not going to talk about this.

We're just going to basically push this to one side.

We support Israel now, we support what's going on.

We're happy.

We're a key military backer of them.

So to have this scene in this film, as you say, Mike, of not only the bar the Atlantic barkeeper is up, you know is Jewish.

But that scene where that guy calls him an old jit or an old you know, gives him that racial slur about it, and then you see his tattoo.

Wow, mind blowing, really, I mean absolutely mind blowing.

Well, it's just so casual.

And there's the casual racism too.

There's the soccer game that's going on on TV and Robert's partner is there and it's with he's with I can't remember the character's name, but it's an older woman who apparently runs a shop in town.

Oh yeah, the woman who won't let any any let America people in her establishment.

Yeah, shopping is shopping, but this is a private place and so I won't let any riff raff like refugees and Americans in here.

And it's like, oh, I feel like.

The implication is that this is a lady who would have been totally fine with the Holocaust as long as it didn't affect her personally.

And Ellie is standing three feet away from her.

The Atlantic's owner and his wife kind of are avadue moral center in this film in a way, because they're kind of they just run this establishment.

They try and the countner shows them trying to look after the girls.

They're worried about Ellie.

There's that scene we talked about, that scene where the US soldiers walk in, the white soldiers walk in, and the black soldiers are there, and there's actually a very clear saying that the wife sort of looks at her partner, the owner, and goes, oh, you know, the races they're not going to come in the racism, and you know, so they're kind of they're actually the they're not so bad, those two.

They're just running a business.

Yeah it's six whatever.

But you also kind of see that same sense of these are decent people.

Just trying to survive exactly exactly.

You see that with them, but you see that also with the other female sex worker characters that are kind of in the background.

Like one of the only.

Sort of uplifting scenes, you see this group of six or seven women all walking in a line, arm and arm down the street, singing together, and I think the implication is like, these are sex workers heading back to the brothel.

But they're the only people in the entire movie who seem happy.

For a minute.

Everybody's dreams are crushed.

Everything alays goes wrong for people they think they're going to escape.

Something always has to happen, no matter who it is, whether it's Elie Otto, Robert Inga.

And then what happens with Inga.

You know, I'm glad it gave spoiler alert.

I mean, the whole thing of her trying to stop him, hanging on to the door and falling off to her death at the end of this film, because she goes back and forth.

He keeps thinking, I'm going to escape.

I'm not going to escape.

I'm going to escape.

I'm not going to escape, Like what's going to happen.

Finally thinks that he's in the clear.

She kind of blows the whistle on everything, and he's like, Okay, you know, that's it.

I'm leaving, and she tries to grab onto the door, falls off and dies.

And then you have one of the most depressing endings that I've seen in a long time, because now we get to bury something else, which is inga and that just the cold automation of and the the very determined way that he, you know, opens up the back of the truck goes up to it starts the whole process of the truck lifting up so it can pour out the gravel onto her body.

And then what do you guys think as far as him just jumping into that gravel?

I mean, is that just a sudden like momentary loss and he just says that's it, I'm done, I'm throwing it all away right now.

Or do you think he had that planned?

I think he had it planned.

The use of the gravel, like we said at the beginning of this episode.

Just the way that they bring all of these details together constantly throughout the film, It's like it had to happen.

He had to jump into the gravel.

There is no other way to end this.

I mean, I guess there's the quote unquote happy ending version or the ambiguous ending version where he just drives off into the mist, like you said, But that doesn't feel right.

It doesn't feel like the actual narrative conclusion thought.

I thought it was a spur of the moment thing myself.

I just because I don't there you go.

I mean, I he just was got so overcome and upset by what happened at the end.

He just basically through and he loved it because there are flashes of that love.

Yeah, him him holding onto her shirt and having this picture of her, and keeping those things in his secret cabin that no one knows about and no one else is allowed to go to.

And I think you also see that love show up in more genuine ways in the second half of the movie, where he's really trying to make decisions that might inconvenience him but will allow her to keep this stable life that she's fought so hard for and.

She's trying to keep it together because she and she Because there's a couple of scenes, I think at least two scenes where she basically says to her coming with the major's name is, but she basically says to her American serviceman husband, look, we need to go back to America or bad things are going to happen.

I'm gonna I'm going to sleep with this with this guy, I this truck driver that I obviously had a great passionate relationship with I ages ago after the war, and even though it was poor, it was real.

We were we were real.

If you don't take me out of here immediately, this is going to go really badly.

So she's kind of she's kind of poorn too, you know, between us.

Yeah, it reminds me of some classic noir, like like something like Guilda where she's with the husband.

And granted the husband in Gilda is way more nefarious, but it's like she has this comfortable life with a husband who she's made this kind of bargain with, like I will be this sort of ideal and you will give me this life of stability and comfort and security.

Except when this person comes from the past, like we got to get rid of them because this is going to ruin everything, the very like tenuous relationship they actually have, and I I think that's what's so interesting about how this unfolds.

And I know we talked about this earlier, but you just see how superficial her relationship with her husband is.

There was a hanging animal, stuffed animal in Robert's truck that gets very prominent placement, and I think it's an elephant.

Do you think that's the whole thing of you know, memory and you know, not letting things go and never forgetting.

Maybe I didn't even think about that.

Have you been in soco analysis again?

When did I stop?

What's the elephant?

A stuffed elephant?

Yeah, elephants never forget.

Yeah, that's right.

I didn't really notice the elephant either.

Actually, I must admit I didn't really.

You will never not see it now next time you watch it.

I don't watch it after the phrase Freeman.

See the elephant.

But there's also the kitten that I was convinced something terrible was going to happen to.

One of the first scenes where Ellie shows up and she's not in the truck, she has this like kitten resting on her chest, and I was just like, oh God, when's this kitten getting run over?

But luckily the kitten doesn't make a reappearance.

Poor old Ellie, because I mean, Ellie hitches her wagon.

So when it's clear that Robert's not gonna the thing with Robert's not going to work out, when he.

Kicks her out when they're about to have sex, he kicks her out and even says, you have to get dressed out there, it's so cold.

And then she so she hitches her wagon to Robert's partner in the in the black the gravel black market business is going to go to Canada, and of course the authorities are investigating the black gravel business.

And that's that we talked about that earlier where Inger but and that this is Inga's first fatal mistake.

Well Inga's first matal mistake was getting him a truck with Robert actually, but then but then Inga basically contacts Robert and says, they're investigating.

The police are on the road tonight.

You've got to dump the gravel that you're stealing, otherwise you're going to get arrested.

And as a result, a whole lot of the drivers get arrested, but Robert doesn't get arrested, but that eventually the investigation leads back to I can't remember what his name is, but it's a Roberts partner who Ellie is planning to go to Canada with, and he gets arrested and gets led out of the of the Atlantic and he just says, oh, well, that's that's my Canada dreams gone as the police Canada and poor old Ellie and another one of these incredibly graphic scenes.

There's so many, so many points at which this film could have been banned.

She just goes and throws up on almost throws up on the screen because she's so emotionally destroyed by I was about to say seeing her meal ticket to Canada basically get arrested by the police, but I think that's probably being a bit cynical.

But basically that's too Seneca.

Yeah, by basically seeing her chance at another life outside of this town basically taken away.

And I love that she makes it up the stairs but then is just shown throwing up over the railing onto what looks.

Like some kind of ceiling over.

Yeah, that design of that building is great.

Where it's like bar down below and then you go up through the ceiling with the staircase up into the barn area.

I guess it is.

And Sam, you're talking about like the layers of mystery that we have with all of these things.

It's the black gravel investigation.

Is that the couple that's missing, you know?

Is it the CIA guy who's looking for people running over to the east, all these kind of things.

But then overlaying everything is the search for the dog and just how that keeps coming back, Like he's using that as a manipulation tool with inga where it's like, oh yeah, this guy called me and he's got more information about Tug the dog, and oh yeah, he sent me the collar and stuff.

And like the even after he accidentally kills Annie and Bill, like he reaches into his pocket and the collar falls out and it falls onto the ground, the same ground where like basically the blood is from their corpses, and I'm like yeah, and as they're like digging up stuff, the dog comes back, you know, the dog the corpse comes back, like that gets dug up rather than Bill and Andy, And it's just like constantly that dog is at the center of everything.

Like, I love that amazing shot of the two separate beds, and he does make a reference to how the major and inga sleep in separate beds, and what's on her bed is the leash, and we get that twice of the leash being right there, dead center on her bed, and it's just like, Tug is so much the heart of this movie, starting off with him and basically ending with the mystery of what happened to this damn dog.

All right, p Tug and the cynicism of the Cold War.

So because you've got I think we know we noted this earlier.

So one of the layers the investigation into the Missing Americans young American service model and he's young German bride to build a bride to be he wants to marry it.

And there's this sketchy CIA German CIA agent who's sort of nosing around, and Robert thinks, of this guy is onto us.

But of course then he just basically says, oh, look, I've investigated with these two are and because their marriage certificate got knocked back, I'm pretty sure they basically just affected to the east.

And so that's over and Robert, Robert can hardly believe it.

It's like, what, so that's that's it.

I mean, you know, can hardly believe he's believe he's he is.

It just makes the whole thing worse though that, like there are these potentially huge legal issues that he's going to get swept into, and then everything seems to kind of resolve on its own in a way that it never does in film noir except just kidding.

Everyone dies anyway.

It really is bad.

It actually is bad, but like it makes.

Their deaths feel so much more senseless and nihilistic, like they didn't have to No one had to die here.

Even the dog didn't have to die, Like that was just a sheer, selfish act of cruelty.

Yeah, he was just in the way.

They could have just you know, and Robert's striining his best to get the dog out of the way.

But then here comes this asshole who just throws a big fucking rock at the dog's head and murders them.

And yeah, just for me, it sets off everything.

The only thing that really had to die in this film is everybody's desire just to forget what's happened in the past.

That's the one thing that has to die and does die on a daily on a you know, a minute by minute basis, you.

Know, which I think it's important to point out.

I feel like in a lot of ways, you could read this as a reflection on the rubble films, especially because of the fact that it quite literally deals with like gravel and rubble and rebuilding.

But the rubble films are often all about like the moral at the end of them is everything will be fine.

We just need to forget and move on like it never happened, And this movie is like, I'm Minutera bitter.

I'm just going to be thinking about the Columbus Day speech forever.

It's so twisted.

They also, I believe, used Americas because it was filmed near an actual US Air Force base, and they used American I mean, the guy who plays Inga's husband, who's quite a competent American, but he's actually German.

He speaks way too fluent German to actually be an American actor in the early sixties.

Hans Cassie Major John Gaines.

They used real American servicemen from that base, and I can only imagine what the American occupation authorities must have thought when they saw black gravel too, because it's you know, it's damning of them as well.

What's that scene Robert basically says at one point in the film, are ye, the first occupiers are open handed.

Now they're just typefisted.

It's this massive, massive conflict they've got because the occupation soured by now and they're basically they're pissed off at them.

You wouldn't have been able to make this film at all when the rubble films were being made, because the Rubble films were overseen by the US Military Media Office, so they weren't censored exactly, but there was this agreement that like, okay, certain subjects we're not going to make films about in the first couple of years after the war while everything gets stabilized.

But by the early sixties, guess it was fair game, even though no one was happy about it.

And that's that's saying at the very beginning of the film with the again with the Dog, when the dog is I think in the why of the gravel trucks getting unloaded and so this this German trucker throws a rock at the dog and kills the dog, and the American Service there's an American serviceman watching on and he just by think this really.

Makes punches them.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that the German and the German and miss American get into a fight, and the and the German Trucker is a pretty reptilian character, but he actually says, look, this is yeah, listen, Yank, it's not like this anymore.

You're not in charge anymore.

Okay that's not the exact words, but it's basically words to the effect that we're not taking this from you anymore.

You know, you're not going to bully us around.

It because you're not me.

Yeah, that's right.

If I want to kill a dog by gad, I well.

Yeah, I think that might be Bill that is the one that's fighting the German trucker.

I think I think so too.

Bill is a Tubbs's honor.

But Bill is also such a wholesome character in general.

For the little that we see him.

He has to die, he does.

He's too good for this world.

And he's as you say, what does Robert call them?

Good kids?

I think the only the only people in the entire film that Robert has got anything positive to say about, and that he doesn't try and rip off, and everyone seems to like them.

Yeah, yeah, even tries to fix his car after he's dead.

Yeah, so of course I have to bicyclely get accidentally run out of by Robert's truck because that's that's where we're going.

Of course, down the drain.

The guy that plays Bill is Peter Nessler, and he was a writer director in his own right.

I never saw any of his films yet, but he directed like forty some movies.

Yeah.

There.

Like Andrew said earlier, there really is this whole world of German cinema that I think it's hard to get access to.

There's not a lot of these films that have been restored or released, but I think that's changing slowly.

I hope so.

I mean because Quaitner is just fascinating to me.

After watching The Apple Fell I was just in love with that movie and wanted to see more.

So that Black Revel was noir.

I was talking to Andrew last week and just saying, you know that I think it was Kristaph Faust.

She wrote about it, and I was just like, wow, this sounds amazing.

That poster image of the legs coming out from underneath the car.

I was like, Okay, yeah, this is great, And I was so glad that they restored this.

I mean the print you can see a little bit of damage around the real changes, but otherwise it's just absolutely gorgeous.

And you see some of these shots, like when the guys pull over Robert and they're looking at his truck to see if he's got gravel in it, and you've got the one guy talking with Robert, and then in the side view mirror you see the guy looking inside of the truck and it's just perfectly framed.

And I'm like, this is somebody who knows how to shoot a movie, and obviously he'd been shooting movies for like twenty years at that point, if not more.

And it's like, okay, great, Yeah, I'd love to see the craftsmanship.

Everything looks so good in this movie.

And I'm just like, all right, bring on more, give me more of these Koitner films.

I just can't wait to dive in.

Yeah, I mean real grasp, but I mean it's a sign in port of Freedom that will real grass scene, which I always like to throw into a projection booth podcast.

That word, it's a perfect word for us.

Yeah, it's kind of quite the realistic parts.

Yes, it's very influenced by the realism.

So there's and it's got and then there's the outside scenes with the truckers are quite almost documented.

There's almost a documentary feel with those, and then there's there's there's there's amazing scenes in the Atlantic and some of the some of the setups that he doesn't you know, look at mirrors, looking in you know, looking through doorways with guy people.

His use of windows just absolutely so it's just absolutely amazing.

There's this scene that I love so much where he's in his bedroom above the bar, and there's a scene of him standing shot from below, and the poster of the naked woman that's on the ceiling above his bed.

He's like bisecting her so that you can't see her torso or any kind of like genitalia, And then the camera shifts so you see the mirror reflection of that where he's standing, but instead of it being shot from below, it's shot from above, and his body is similarly blocking Ellie's naked body or nearly naked body, and that it's like that kind of shot composition and framing and cinematography I think just is constantly reminding you of how superficial things are, how people are exploited, how people are often treated as just like filler and huh, but such a beautiful sequence.

So it does make you wonder what else is out there?

Yeah, I mean, I've been trying to home away through.

I've got a few of these German sixties films and I've been trying to watch them, and now in Black Gravel is the best, but there's some good ones, and there's I'll just scratch the surface.

I want to even see his American stuff, the Restless Years and Stranger in my Arms.

I mean, it's a chance to see Sandra D again and Stranger in My Arms and June Allison, and then Restless Years has John Sexon in it, so sign me up, and sander D again, so Gause he and sander D had a little bit of a thing going him and her and Koitner.

He must have heighted Hollywood.

But I feel like so many of those forties movies where directors came over to make films here are all really either downbeat or weird, like what's that genre?

Woman on the Beach so weird?

But that last Year, Yes, it's great, but they all have this sense of displacement, like I am working in a studio system that is a monstrous and b doesn't make any sense and is also just a propaganda machine.

Those are fools movies that he made.

He was over here those.

Oh my god, Yeah, I love those so good.

Those movies are all very anti conservative, heteronormative capitalism.

It's amazing he got them made at all.

All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.

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What city please like, I'm in Hollywood and I want to report a murder.

I'm detective starting a Lloyd Hawkins with the police department.

It's about Julie Nemar.

Yeah, actually I can about calling you, and I just didn't know what to say.

Killer there's a dangerous man on the loose.

All I care about is stabbing his maniac before he kills a can do you understand?

Come on Dutch, you're blown away abroad state.

The least you can do is drive her home.

His boss thinks he's trouble.

If you go to the media, I'll crucify you.

You wanted that day, don't you?

How can you tell?

You?

Always shake just a little.

His friends think he's crazy.

Now one day should spend up in the forest breaking an entering, robbery and now possible murder.

But you gotta line up for tonight.

Women think he's a menace?

Would you do that?

Try to think of a three letter word for explosive?

A cop, you gotta take me here.

Well, there's some good news and there's some bad news.

The good news is you're right.

I'm a cop and I got to take you in.

Bad news is I've been suspended and I.

Don't give up.

Cop James Woods in the most startling performance of his career with Leslie Ann Warren and Charles Derning.

When a man cares too much?

How far is too far?

As right?

We'll be back next week.

When they look at James b Harris's cop Until then, I want to thank my co host Sam and Andrew.

So, Andrew, what is the lad this with you, sir?

Just not.

I'm not working on much at the moment.

I've got a couple of book projects that I'm sort of working on, but probably not doing as much as I should be on them, frankly distracted too much by the by the lure of Berlin.

I have a substack.

Paulpe Curry is my substack, or you can find it under my name Andrew Netti, So subscribe.

I might even write about Black Gravel.

Actually, when this episode comes out, I think.

And Sam House's busiest woman in New York City.

I would very much like to be feeling the lore of New York City and wandering around and going to art exhibits and not working.

I guess the things I should shout out.

I recently wrote an essay about gen Rolan for Criterion, who were doing a Roland series this fall.

I just did a very long.

Hammer Dracula series episode for my Aeros plus Massacre podcast, and a million other things not sleeping.

But if you like Black Gravel, you should also check out the Robert Hossein set that Radiance is putting out which very different because they're French, but also have some very very interesting late fifties early sixties examples of kind of neo noir where this same type of exploitative sexuality is really at the heart of the films.

And I did an essay or a video essay for that set.

Yeah, we're going to talk about Cemetery without Crosses next year, just to talk about more Husseins.

It's great, another underrated one, totally.

Yeah, I'm just glad that more of his movies are getting out there, so that's fantastic.

Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show.

Thanks to everybody for listening.

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