The Murderers Are Among Us (1946)

The film’s title, The Murderers Are Among Us, comes from the diary of one of the main characters, Dr. Hans Mertens. He has written these words after learning that his former commanding officer, Ferdinand Brückner, has survived the war and is living comfortably in Berlin, a city that has been reduced to rubble during World War II. Mertens is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), so much so that he has squatted in a stranger’s apartment and finds only enough money to keep himself inebriated every day. The stranger, Susanne Wallner, returns to her apartment after being imprisoned in a concentration camp, and their meeting sets off the series of events that form the narrative of the film.

The film was released after World War II with several titles. I chose the one on the copy of the DVD that I borrowed.

◊ Die Mörder sind unter uns (Germany)

◊ The Murderers Are Among Us (United Kingdom)

◊ Murderers Among Us (United States)

The Murderers Are Among Us starts with white type: “Berlin 1945 Die Stadt hat kapitulient . . .” (“The city has capitulated.”) Discordant ragtime music on the soundtrack accompanies the camera as it pans up from a mound of earth, what could be a grave, to Mertens walking through the rubble of Berlin. Children are running and playing in puddles. He walks up to the front of a cabaret, the source of the music. It is also where he spends most of his time.

Then an overcrowded train carries passengers into Berlin. Susanne Wallner disembarks; she is one of a crowd returning to Berlin, she in particular from a concentration camp. Susanne had been taken away at the same time her father had been arrested. No one seems to know why, and it’s likely Susanne and her father never knew either.

Mertens comes home drunk once again to Susanne’s apartment, where he has taken up residence. The neighbors are critical of his behavior, and they will be critical later of his living in the apartment after Susanne’s return. In one scene, viewers see only their sharp profiles in shadow and hear them talking, one telling the other that they should complain about the two of them; the other responds that there is no one to complain to these days. The implication is that people can’t trust their neighbors, some of whom were quite willing to report them to authorities (that is, the Nazis) simply if they didn’t approve of their behavior. Despite the ruinous consequences of the war, people are still willing to talk behind people’s backs and get them in serious trouble with the authorities, or whoever will replace the Nazis.

Before Susanne arrives at her apartment, she stops to visit Mondschein, an optometrist. He is still working at his trade in a small cubbyhole of a store in the first floor of her apartment building. She is glad to see that he is still alive, and he is very happy to see her, too. When Susanne seems about to break down because of her memories, Mondschein encourages her to find a goal to live for. He also warns her about the squatter, the man living in her apartment. It’s obvious that he cares about her safety, both psychological and physical. When Susanne gets to her apartment, she asks the stranger to find another place to live, but he refuses. She gives in and lets him stay, although she isn’t completely sure that she can trust him.

So much of the film is shot in extreme close-ups. The main characters, especially Hans and Susanne, are living under a microscope, and the camera’s eye accentuates that. They are confined, isolated, poor. They are hemmed in by the rubble of the city, and they are hemmed in by poverty, desperation, and limited choices. Filming on location and the extreme close-ups emphasize the predicament that all the characters face, what the citizens of Europe faced at the time.

Existentialism is one of the many themes of film noir, and in The Murderers Are Among Us, the characters face existential crises every day. The film does not sugarcoat what their daily lives are like. Some of the characters’ conversations directly address the philosophical implications of postwar life. Hans Mertens, perhaps the character who is most despairing, is the one who initiates most of these conversations. When he stops in Mondschein’s shop after a night of heavy drinking at the cabaret, the two talk about Mondschein’s son and the possibility of his safe return now that the war is over. The conversation turns into a discussion of both hope and despair:

• Mertens: “How can you be sure he’s not a wealthy man by now? A homeowner? Living in a mansion somewhere out there with shining windows and a garden full of flowers to call his own?”

• Mondschein: “I will have willingly worked in vain. He will come back here anyway.”

• Mertens: “Maybe he forgot his father. Maybe he thinks you are dead. It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

• Mondschein: “He’d come to look for my grave. [pause] You are a poor soul, Dr. Mertens.”

• Mertens: “We all are, my friend.”

When Hans returns to the apartment, he tells Susanne: “But I’m a special surgeon. One who can’t stand seeing blood. I can no longer bear to hear the moans of people in torment. I know there is no longer any point in healing mankind.” At the end of their conversation, the film then cuts to a shot of a bombed-out building, part of which crumbles to the ground in a cloud of dust. Without hope, any remnant of civilization crumbles to the ground. Hans Mertens’s psychological torment could eventually kill him, even though constant wartime danger hadn’t.

(This article about The Murderers Are Among Us contains spoilers.)

Susanne finds a letter addressed to someone named Elise Brückner on the apartment floor, she decides to deliver it herself. She learns that Elise Brückner’s husband, Ferdinand Brückner, is still alive and was Hans’s commanding officer. She tells Hans, thinking that it will please him. He does go to visit Brückner, has dinner with him and his family. He sees that the Brückners are living well in war-torn Berlin. He also learns that Ferdinand Brückner is the manager of a factory making pots out of used and battered helmets. Brückner returns Mertens’s gun to him, which triggers an audio flashback for Mertens.

Hans finally decides to go to a hospital to offer his services, but he suffers another PTSD episode when he hears a patient moaning in pain. He is hospitalized instead. In another flashback, viewers learn that Hans may have inadvertently saved Brückner’s life. During the war, when they were attacked by Allied forces, Brückner was wounded, and he requested Hans’s gun to kill himself rather than be taken prisoner. Hans had assumed that his commanding officer had died because he was forced to leave him behind.

Mondschein visits Susanne in her apartment to warn her about Hans, about “running straight into disaster.” But Susanne loves the doctor. One could make the claim that Mondschein is trying to interfere in Susanne’s life, but he does so out of concern for her. Unlike the neighbors in Susanne’s apartment building, he doesn’t go to third parties with his worries; he goes to Susanne herself and suggests that she might be heading for danger with a man like Hans Mertens.

Mondschein is not well from the start of the film. He has a persistent cough that is present during his first meeting with Susanne Wallner after her return to Berlin. Bartholomäus Timm, Susanne’s neighbor and a fortune-teller, is doing a booming business in these hard postwar times, and even Mondschein, who seems the most able of all the characters to cope, goes to visit him for good news about his son. Timm is nothing but a charlatan, of course, peddling information that is based on nothing at all. Mondschein always has his own determination and hope, however, and nothing can take that away from him.

Mertens goes to Brückner’s factory looking for Brückner, who is happy to see him. His wife is out of town, and he wants Mertens to take him to a bar with girls. Mertens plans to use the opportunity to kill Brückner, and he leads Brückner almost aimlessly through the rubble not to find the cabaret but to find a spot where no one will see them. Brückner, oblivious to Mertens’s plans, is also oblivious to the suffering around them. They walk past ruins and people cleaning debris by passing buckets hand to hand. He advises Mertens: “Don’t look so sad. We want to have fun. Every era offers its chances if you find them. Helmets from saucepans or saucepan from helmets. It’s the same game. You must manage. That’s all.”

Mertens is interrupted in his plans by the sudden appearance of a mother frantic about her daughter, who is back in their apartment and cannot breathe. Brückner tells the woman that Mertens is a doctor and tells Mertens to go to the woman’s apartment. Mertens hesitates, and Brückner encourages him to save the child’s life. Mertens finally agrees and goes with the mother to her apartment. Brückner continues on his way looking for the bar, while Mertens helps the daughter and saves her from choking. This act helps his frame of mind, and he has some hope once again.

Brückner is a hypocrite, a murderer, a torturer. He has no scruples about killing innocent women and children. He has no guilt about cheating on his wife. But he has compassion for the mother’s sick daughter, a child, a German citizen. Some of the characters in this film are capable of more evil than others, but even the evil is juxtaposed with some good.

Mertens returns to the factory on Christmas Eve to kill Brückner. When Mertens arrives, he hears Brückner giving a motivational speech to his workers. He has another flashback, one that is longer and more complete than his previous flashbacks. Christmas Eve was the same day three years ago that Mertens tries to dissuade Brückner from killing over 100 men, women, and children because the Germans heard a shot but didn’t know where it came from. A detailed report submitted at the time is part of this flashback.

Susanne finds and reads Hans’s diary. She learns that Hans was glad to give Brückner his gun not because he wanted to do a friend a favor but because it relieved him of the responsibility of killing Brückner himself. Susanne realizes that Hans wants to kill Brückner and rushes after him. The only thing that stops Hans is Susanne’s appearance at the factory. On their way home, Hans tells Susanne that it is important to submit a report about Brückner because it is the best way to help atone for the millions of people who died in the war.

The Murderers Are Among Us is considered the first of what would eventually be called the rubble films, and I think it is one of the best. In just under eighty-one minutes, several stories and themes are successfully interwoven to depict postwar conditions in Europe. Each of the characters handles the pressures in their own ways, each different and, I suspect, representative of the reality at the time. It’s a hard film to watch—and not just because of the deplorable conditions in postwar Europe. The characters must learn to hope again, even though they face never-ending deprivation and life-or-death choices in peacetime. It is a reminder that it could happen again, that it is happening today in Ukraine. That is a very sobering realization.

October 15, 1946, release date  •  Directed by Wolfgang Staudte  •  Screenplay by Wolfgang Staudte  •  Music by Ernst Roters  •  Edited by Hans Heinrich  •  Cinematography by Friedl Behn-Grund, Eugen Klagemann

Hildegard Kner as Susanne Wallner  •  Ernst Wilhelm Borchert as Dr. Hans Mertens  •  Arno Paulsen as Captain Ferdinand Brückner  •  Robert Forsch as Gustav Mondschein  •  Albert Johannes as Bartholomäus Timm  •  Ursula Krieg as Carola Schulz  •  Wolfgang Dohnberg as Fritz Knochenhauer  •  Erna Sellmer as Elise Brückner  •  Michael Günther as Herbert Brückner  •  Christian Blackwood as Otto Brückner  •  Hilde Adolphi as Daisy  •  Marlise Ludwig as Sonja  •  Elly Burgmer as Edith’s mother  •  Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur as Arzt  •  Wanda Peters as Schwester  •  Christiane Hanson as Dienstmädchen  •  Käthe Jöken-König as Kundin

Produced by DEFA Studios