The Escape in the Silent

The Escape in the Silent is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Siegfried Hartmann. It was released in 1966.

Plot

Construction works carried out in a small village in Thuringia reveal the corpses of two members of the Waffen-SS, who seem to have been buried during the end of the Second World War - although no fighting took place in the area. Two forensics experts from the People's Police Investigations Department, Stetter and Hoffmann, arrive in the village to determine the cause of death. At first, they suspect the then owner of the property where the bodies were discovered; but after questioning him, he is murdered. A golden coin they found leads them to a local woman named Helga, and they reveal the truth behind the matter.

Cast

Fritz Diez as Stetter
Dieter Wien as Hoffmann
Marita Böhme as Helga Klink
Regine Albrecht as Inge Klink
Jiří Vršťala as Wills
Hans-Joachim Hanisch as Zschunke
Hans Hardt-Hardtloff as Schindler
Karlheinz Liefers as priest
Wolfgang Brunecker as Möller
Rolf Ludwig as Karl Reinhold
Horst Schön as SS man
Ernst-Georg Schwill as police clerk
Siegfried Weiß as jeweler
Günter Sonnenberg as Heinz Klink
Willi Neuenhahn as the wheelwright

Production

The script was based on Wolfgang Held's novel, The Death Pays with Ducats, published at 1964.

Reception

At 1966, Albert Wilkening wrote that "this thriller continues the honored tradition of DEFA, by combining the genre with contemporary issues, as well as an important historical and political background." The Eulenspiegel magazine's reviewer commented that "Finally... One must see the film, for the sake of the elusive culmination of its plot." The German Film Lexicon regarded it as "a criminal drama, the powerful statement of which is weakened by formalistic deficiencies."