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The Lost One (1951, Germany) (aka
Der Verlorene)
In actor/director-writer Peter Lorre's sole directorial
effort after leaving the Hollywood studio system - an expressionistic,
bleak, low-budget, film noirish crime-drama thriller reminiscent
of Lorre's earlier film - Fritz Lang's M (1931, Germ.), and
serving as a confessional symbol of Germany's collective war guilt:
- the protagonist: the chain-smoking and hard-drinking,
world-weary resident physician Dr. Karl Neumeister (Peter Lorre)
- working at a post-war displaced-persons refugee camp near Hamburg,
delivering inoculations - and his flashbacked chronological story
about the war years
- at the refugee camp, he met up with unrepentant Nowak
(Karl John) - a renamed acquaintance and lab assistant from his past
who was assigned to be his new helper in the camp; Neumeister was
reminded of his guilty activities and overwhelmed when he recalled
a traumatic war crime years earlier in 1943
- Note: Neumeister was known as Nazi Germany scientist
Dr. Karl Rothe, while conducting secret research on pathogenic microbes
in Nazi-era Hamburg, although someone was leaking results of his
secret studies to the Allies
- Dr. Rothe's fiancee Inge Hermann (Renate Mannhardt)
had been discovered to be working as a spy for the Allies; her duplicity
was revealed by Hösch (aka Nowak) (Karl John), an undercover
Gestapo Nazi hired by intelligence chief Col. Winkler (Helmut Rudolph)
to determine the source of the leak of Rothe's research; Rothe was
provoked by Hosch into a jealous rage to kill his fiancee Inge for
the double-betrayal - for having cheated on him with Hosch, and for
her treason
- the gripping scene of Rothe's murder (off-screen)
of Inge (by strangulation) when she tried to win him back; as she
knelt before him and closed her eyes, she helped him to gently caress
and touch her hair, necklace, and neck before rising up (black covered
the screen) and presumably tightening his hands around her neck;
afterwards, he was seen sitting with her necklace no longer on her
neck; he calmly put the necklace into his pocket; after the crime,
the government authorities - including Hosch and Rothe - covered
up the crime (making it appear like a suicide)
Rothe's Strangulation Murder of Fiancee Inge Hermann
For Treason and Infidelity
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- Rothe's transformation into a pathological, cold-blooded
serial killer - and the powerful scene of his murderous intent
in an empty staircase with an intuitive, street-walking prostitute
(Gisela Trowe) (who looked at him, recognized him as a death-threatening
man filled with evil, labeled him a "Killer!", and ran
off)
- Rothe's subsequent murder of a seductive married woman
(Lotte Rausch) in a train compartment, as he stared at her while
lighting his cigarette, and she realized - although too late - that
she was about to be murdered due to the sick impulses of Rothe
- the concluding downbeat pair of chilling sequences:
Neumeister's revenge against Nowak by point-blank shooting him with
a gun, and then his own self-destructive suicide when Neumeister
walked out to nearby train tracks, and stood with his back to an
oncoming train, covered his face with his hand, and awaited obliterating
death
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Shooting Nowak
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Neumeister's Suicide
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Dr. Karl Neumeister (Peter Lorre)
Dr. Neumeister's Camp Helper Nowak
Rothe's Threatened Murder of Prostitute
Murder of Married Woman in Train Compartment
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