Episode 773: Black Gravel (1961)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Oh geez bolts, it's showtime.

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People say good money to see this movie.

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Out set keys, I'm film for Helmut Kitner.

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Speaker 1 (03:33):
Let's go.

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Speaker 1 (03:50):
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
joined me once again as mister Andrew Nettie.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
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

(04:17):
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

(04:38):
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?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
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

(05:23):
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

(05:43):
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.

(06:07):
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

(06:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
And Sam, how about yourself.

Speaker 8 (06:52):
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,

(07:13):
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,

(07:35):
the really incredible kind of expressionistic lighting, the bar sequences,
Like there's nothing about this that I didn't love.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
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

(08:06):
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,

(08:28):
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.

(08:50):
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

(09:11):
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.

(09:31):
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.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
End of it.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
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

(10:05):
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

(10:26):
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.

Speaker 8 (10:38):
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

(11:00):
the script is just brilliant, Like they thought everything through.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
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

(11:26):
good one by a director called Wolfgang Starter called The
Murderers Are amongst Us That was nineteen forty.

Speaker 9 (11:32):
Six, a great one.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
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.

(11:54):
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

(12:15):
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

(12:37):
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

(13:02):
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.

(13:22):
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

(13:46):
of Germany has done a good job of bearing any
kind of effort to hunt down Nazis.

Speaker 9 (13:52):
Yeah, to his own benefit.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
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,

(14:17):
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,

(14:38):
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

(15:02):
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

(15:23):
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.

Speaker 8 (15:40):
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

(16:05):
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,

(16:26):
is like how present the political themes are without being
super central to the narrative in more obvious ways.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
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,

(16:58):
it's just their going through the film, every single fiber
of the film.

Speaker 8 (17:03):
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

(17:24):
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

(17:47):
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.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
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

(18:20):
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

(18:40):
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.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
I did, but that was ten years ago, but you
were on vacation.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
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

(19:17):
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

(19:39):
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

(20:00):
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

(20:21):
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.

Speaker 8 (20:30):
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.

(20:50):
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

(21:13):
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

(21:34):
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

(21:54):
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

(22:17):
not the shift, but like the truth of their relationship
build in the second half of the film.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
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.

(22:43):
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

(23:03):
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

(23:25):
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

(23:47):
it turns there. I don't know if you've ever seen
a lazy Susan.

Speaker 9 (23:50):
Now, please please describe one.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
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.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
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

(24:33):
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

(24:53):
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

(25:13):
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

(25:35):
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

(25:58):
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

(26:22):
economic miracle is going in nineteen sixty one. So there's
so many levels of which it could have been banned.

Speaker 9 (26:27):
I think, oh, it seems inevitable.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
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

(26:52):
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

(27:13):
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

(27:36):
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.

Speaker 9 (27:50):
And dark, or Ellie.

Speaker 8 (27:53):
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

(28:14):
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

(28:36):
suddenly more nudity and the suggestion of even with something
like Psycho, the suggestion of someone.

Speaker 9 (28:42):
Being naked in the shower.

Speaker 8 (28:44):
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

(29:07):
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,

(29:29):
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

(29:50):
each other. But we haven't talked yet about the people.

Speaker 9 (29:55):
Who get killed in the movie. Is this couple.

Speaker 8 (29:58):
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

(30:20):
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.

Speaker 9 (30:39):
And it's like, why why.

Speaker 8 (30:41):
Is this universe so hostile to the two people who
are genuinely in love.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
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.

Speaker 5 (31:06):
They are.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
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

(31:28):
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

(31:49):
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

(32:10):
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

(32:30):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
That song plays throughout them, It's always playing in the
Atlantic tu box.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
It haunts them to the point where that's the last
song that you hear in the in the movie.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
And I love that with the jets going overhead, yes,
and the.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
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

(33:12):
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.

(33:33):
It was a simple accident, but nope, we have to
cover it up.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
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

(33:59):
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.

Speaker 8 (34:16):
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,

(34:40):
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

(35:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I don't think it's an implication. I mean it's I
think we see.

Speaker 8 (35:20):
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

(35:43):
one can catch a break.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
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

(36:06):
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

(36:30):
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

(36:51):
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

(37:12):
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.

Speaker 9 (37:30):
GI, that sounds amazing.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
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

(37:53):
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

(38:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
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.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
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.

Speaker 6 (39:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (39:05):
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

(39:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
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,

(40:09):
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

(40:31):
that was one of the other things that the Oberhausen
group were kind of eluding, you know.

Speaker 8 (40:36):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
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,

(41:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
The town or anchors away.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
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

(41:52):
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,

(42:13):
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

(42:34):
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,

(42:54):
and a whole lot of this sort of stuff, you.

Speaker 8 (42:56):
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

(43:17):
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

(43:39):
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

(44:02):
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?

Speaker 2 (44:18):
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

(44:41):
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

(45:01):
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

(45:24):
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

(45:45):
in that lost decade and a half of cinema. That's
really right, I think for reappraisal.

Speaker 8 (45:52):
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

(46:16):
thirties onwards to the early seventies, like genre cinemas barely
being made.

Speaker 9 (46:24):
It's so strange.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
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.

Speaker 9 (46:44):
In villages and mountains, And it kind of reminds me
of the way that in the fifties and sixties.

Speaker 8 (46:52):
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

(47:14):
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

(47:34):
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

(47:57):
was and how real it felt. And Heidelberg, which is
incredibly beautiful if you've never been there, also has similar.

Speaker 9 (48:04):
Views of like all these old buildings and churches.

Speaker 8 (48:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
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,

(48:50):
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.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
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

(49:25):
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

(49:46):
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

(50:08):
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

(50:30):
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

(50:51):
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,

(51:13):
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.

Speaker 8 (51:33):
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

(51:56):
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

(52:17):
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.

(52:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
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.

Speaker 8 (53:16):
Okay, so he's still like he's writing the script and
starting production before that happens.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
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.

(53:44):
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

(54:07):
quite heavily from that scene, and then you know, the
critics sort of past it.

Speaker 8 (54:13):
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,

(54:35):
like it's it's.

Speaker 9 (54:36):
Not siding with any of that.

Speaker 8 (54:38):
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

(55:01):
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

(55:22):
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

(55:43):
a military forces. There's a lot happening here.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
We're under the chancellorship of Comrad Adnow he's actually a
chancellor of Germany from nineteen forty nine to nineteen sixty three.

Speaker 8 (55:56):
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,

(56:17):
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.

Speaker 9 (56:39):
They'll Noah was an accident. You won't get punished.

Speaker 8 (56:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
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.

Speaker 9 (57:13):
Your Nazi scientists, and then we will never mention it again.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
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

(57:37):
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.

Speaker 8 (57:47):
And you can also just you know, fine stream Nazis
and execute them as you see fit.

Speaker 9 (57:52):
Yeah, so just don't tell anyone.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
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,

(58:16):
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.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
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.

Speaker 8 (58:53):
Oh yeah, the woman who won't let any any let
America people in her establishment.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
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.

Speaker 8 (59:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
And Ellie is standing three feet away from her.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
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

(59:47):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:00:07):
But you also kind of see that same sense of
these are decent people.

Speaker 8 (01:00:12):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:00:22):
Like one of the only.

Speaker 8 (01:00:26):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:00:44):
For a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
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

(01:01:09):
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

(01:01:32):
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

(01:01:55):
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

(01:02:16):
away right now. Or do you think he had that planned?

Speaker 8 (01:02:20):
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

(01:02:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:03:13):
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

(01:03:37):
her to keep this stable life that she's fought so
hard for and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
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

(01:04:03):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:04:20):
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

(01:04:40):
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.

(01:05:03):
And I know we talked about this earlier, but you
just see how superficial her relationship with her husband is.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:05:27):
Maybe I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Have you been in soco analysis again?

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
When did I stop?

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
What's the elephant? A stuffed elephant?

Speaker 9 (01:05:38):
Yeah, elephants never forget.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Yeah, that's right. I didn't really notice the elephant either. Actually,
I must admit I didn't really.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
You will never not see it now next time you
watch it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
I don't watch it after the phrase Freeman.

Speaker 9 (01:05:52):
See the elephant.

Speaker 8 (01:05:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:06:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
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

(01:06:53):
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

(01:07:15):
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

(01:07:37):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:07:51):
But basically that's too Seneca.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Yeah, by basically seeing her chance at another life outside
of this town basically taken away.

Speaker 8 (01:08:00):
And I love that she makes it up the stairs
but then is just shown throwing up over the railing
onto what looks.

Speaker 9 (01:08:07):
Like some kind of ceiling over.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
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

(01:08:32):
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

(01:08:52):
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

(01:09:13):
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,

(01:09:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
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

(01:10:06):
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,

(01:10:27):
can hardly believe he's believe he's he is.

Speaker 8 (01:10:30):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:10:46):
Everyone dies anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
It really is bad. It actually is bad, but like
it makes.

Speaker 8 (01:10:54):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:11:35):
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

(01:11:56):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:12:11):
It's so twisted.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:12:28):
He speaks way too fluent German to actually be an
American actor in the early sixties.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
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

(01:12:55):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:13:05):
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

(01:13:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:13:58):
Makes punches them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:14:20):
It because you're not me.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 9 (01:14:24):
If I want to kill a dog by gad, I well.

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
Yeah, I think that might be Bill that is the
one that's fighting the German trucker.

Speaker 9 (01:14:33):
I think I think so too.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
Bill is a Tubbs's honor.

Speaker 9 (01:14:36):
But Bill is also such a wholesome character in general.
For the little that we see him.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
He has to die, he does.

Speaker 9 (01:14:44):
He's too good for this world.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Yeah, yeah, even tries to fix his car after he's dead.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:15:10):
Of course, down the drain.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:15:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:15:24):
There.

Speaker 8 (01:15:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
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

(01:16:01):
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

(01:16:24):
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

(01:16:46):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
That word, it's a perfect word for us.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
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

(01:17:26):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:17:40):
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

(01:18:01):
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

(01:18:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
He must have heighted Hollywood.

Speaker 8 (01:19:24):
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,

(01:19:47):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Those are fools movies that he made. He was over
here those.

Speaker 9 (01:20:01):
Oh my god, Yeah, I love those so good.

Speaker 8 (01:20:04):
Those movies are all very anti conservative, heteronormative capitalism.

Speaker 9 (01:20:12):
It's amazing he got them made at all.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
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. Looking for something superior to streaming, a
place with more than five times the selection available at
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(01:20:36):
and DVDs delivered directly to your door. Get in on
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of physical media.

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):
What city please like, I'm in Hollywood and I want
to report a murder.

Speaker 10 (01:20:52):
I'm detective starting a Lloyd Hawkins with the police department.

Speaker 11 (01:20:54):
It's about Julie Nemar.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
Yeah, actually I can about calling you, and I just
didn't know what to say.

Speaker 4 (01:21:00):
Killer there's a dangerous man on the loose.

Speaker 10 (01:21:07):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:21:18):
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?

Speaker 5 (01:21:30):
You?

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Always shake just a little.

Speaker 4 (01:21:33):
His friends think he's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Now one day should spend up in the forest breaking
an entering, robbery and now possible murder. But you gotta
line up for tonight.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
Women think he's a menace?

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
Would you do that?

Speaker 4 (01:21:54):
Try to think of a three letter word for explosive?
A cop, you gotta take me here.

Speaker 11 (01:22:04):
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.

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
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?

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):
Just not.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
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,

(01:23:12):
when this episode comes out, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
And Sam House's busiest woman in New York City.

Speaker 8 (01:23:18):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:23:27):
I guess the things I should shout out.

Speaker 8 (01:23:29):
I recently wrote an essay about gen Rolan for Criterion,
who were doing a Roland series this fall.

Speaker 9 (01:23:38):
I just did a very long.

Speaker 8 (01:23:42):
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

(01:24:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:24:20):
Yeah, we're going to talk about Cemetery without Crosses next year,
just to talk about more Husseins.

Speaker 9 (01:24:26):
It's great, another underrated one, totally.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
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. Want to support physical media and get great
movies by mail, head over to Scarecrow dot com and
try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by meal service, the largest
publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find films there

(01:24:50):
entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you want
it without the scrolling. And yes, Black Gravel is available.
If you want to hear more of me shooting off
my check out some of the other shows that I
work on. They are all available at Wirningwaymedia dot com.
Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to
join the community, visit patreon dot com slash Projection Booth.

(01:25:10):
Every donation we get help some Projection Booth take over
the world.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
Hey Joe, Joe, come on, stand up, Let's go please
dont non Schmidt. Hey Joe, come on. Joe's so good
and I'm very in the mood. Smid, Joe, come on, Joe,

(01:25:39):
she says, no, come on, stand up. Let's both Smid
and later, I'm gonna have some COVID with rum hob
rum hope when we had enough fat town more. Hi Joe,

(01:26:37):
Hey Joe, come on, stand up. Let's go to the
honest play stand no lunchmid, Hey Joe, say Joe, come on,
stand up. Let's go an play stand though lunchmid.

Speaker 5 (01:26:54):
Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
You know what, Joe the.

Speaker 3 (01:26:57):
Back that says no common stand up. Let's go some
bron and Schmidt. Later, I will have some cloth with rum,
cloth with rum, cloth with rum and whenever we had
a number, that's happen bo from buff Roun with Bronn Schmidt,
Rodin Schmidt. H That's it.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 773: Black Gravel (1961)

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Episode 773: Black Gravel (1961)

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