Frankly,
it is absolutely baffling how all those smart film programmers out there
somehow almost never think to pair up the only film Peter Lorre directed with
Fritz’s Lang’s classic M, featuring Lorre’s
career-defining performance. They both dramatize the violent, corrupting
influence of National Socialist ideology on German society, but Lang’s film was
produced during Hitler’s rise to power, while Lorre’s film was made and set
during the early post-war years. In any event, it is impossible to fully
understand Peter Lorre until you see The
Lost One, which fortunately screens in New York as part of the Film Society
of Lincoln Center’s current series, The Lost Years of German Cinema: 1949-1963.
Seriously,
why is this film not revived every other month. Peter Lorre plays a murderer.
Why is that so hard to market? Of course, there is rather more to it than that.
Based on a historical incident, Lorre’s character is masquerading as Dr. Karl
Neumeister, the kindly doctor caring for new arrivals at a displaced persons’
camp. However, a few years prior, he was Dr. Karl Rothe, a leading scientific
researcher for the German war machine. His previous life comes rushing back to
him when comes face-to-face with his former Gestapo minder, Hösch, who has
assumed the identity of Nowak, a medical technician.
At
the time of Rothe’s fateful meeting with one Col. Winkler, observant Germans could
tell the war had turned against the Reich, but hardliners still controlled say-to-day
life with an iron hand. Much to the doctor’s disappointment, Winkler informs him
his fiancée Inge Hermann is suspected of smuggling his classified research
documents to the Allies through her father in Sweden. Consumed by a feeling of
betrayal, Rothe murders Fraulein Hermann that very night, but Hösch and Winkler
very conveniently arrive to cover it up. In the process, we start to question
how complicit Hermann really was or whether it was all part of Hösch’s plan to
control Rothe. Regardless, when Rothe suffers no consequences for his action,
the compulsion to kill, particularly women, will return to him on several
subsequent occasions.
This
really is a lot like the inverse-opposite of M. The two films would also make an intriguing triptych with von
Sternberg’s Crime and Punishment,
starring Lorre as Raskolnikov. It was a bit of a disappointment to Lorre at the
time, but it looks pretty good with the passage of eighty-some years. Arguably,
it is the sort of film that suffers from speculation of what it could have been
and therefore does not get credit for what it is. Taken together as a trio,
they make quite a statement on guilt, compulsion, and otherness,
Regardless,
Lost One is an excellent film in its
own right. It was probably the first and maybe last time Lorre played a psycho-killer
with the sort of subtlety a role like Rothe deserves. As a director (and
co-screenwriter), he also clearly picked up plenty from Lang, Alfred Hitchcock,
John Huston, and all the other journeymen film noir and horror directors he
worked with. It is all kinds of dark and moody, but it puts us squarely Rothe’s
disturbed headspace.
Lorre
is terrific in the lead, but he gives his supporting cast plenty of time and
space to shine. Karl John’s villainous portrayal of Hösch ought to be
remembered as iconic—and maybe it will be in a few years. Renate Mannhardt’s
Inge Hermann could be considered many things, but a stereotypical victim is
definitely not one of them. Eva Ingeborg Scholz and Lotte Rausch also make
quite an impression and forge vastly different chemistry with Lorre, as a
fellow boarder and a victim he meets during an air raid.
Lost One must have great
significance in Lorre’s life and career, since Stephen D. Youngkin used it as
the title of his Lorre biography. It is not exactly a lost film, but it has
been unfairly scarce. In fact, some cineastes might just get angry at their
local repertory film programs when they finally see how compelling it truly is.
Very highly recommended, The Lost One screens
this Wednesday (11/22) and Thursday (11/23) in New York, at the Walter Reade.
