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The Devil Strikes at Night

Screening: Monday 1 October, 6:30pm

The Devil Strikes at Night [Nacht, wenn der Teufel kam] (Robert Siodmak, West Germany 1957)

It's sometimes hard to realize that Robert Siodmak, one of Hollywood's finest noir directors of the forties, actually spent only about a quarter of his career in Hollywood. His final twenty years, after he returned to Germany, produced several films — including The Devil Strikes at Night — that must be counted among his best.

The Devil Strikes at Night is an extremely complex thriller that might loosely be considered a latter-day parallel to Lang's M. Set in the final days of the war, it depicts a Gestapo attempt to divert public attention from wartime disaster by focusing on a search for an elusive mass murderer with some eighty victims to his “credit.” As a political refugee himself, Siodmak pulls no punches in stressing the irony of the situation, and his style is an intriguing mixture of traditional noir expressionism with gray, documentarian coverage of Nazi Germany's last days. (William K. Everson)

Written by Werner Jörg Lüddecke. Photographed by Georg Krause. With Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Annemarie Düringer.

(16mm, B&W, 105 mins, In German with English subtitles)

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