Babylon Berlin (Television Series) (2017–)

The German-language television series Babylon Berlin is noir on a grand scale. It takes place in Berlin, Germany, in 1929, during the interwar period (between World War I and World War II), and it includes many characters and many themes. To describe the time period as turbulent is an understatement. Although the characters don’t know what the future holds for them, viewers always have the nagging feeling that the characters’ lives will get even more complicated—and quickly—as the Great Depression hits and Adolf Hitler continues his rise to power. (This nagging feeling for viewers that the series inspires is one of the many reasons the series can be called noir.) Nazism is part of the storyline, but the series doesn’t take viewers into World War II, at least, not in the first three seasons; it focuses instead on the hedonism and violence in Berlin before political repression became really ugly and much more violent.

(This article about the television series Babylon Berlin contains some important spoilers.)

Type on the screen at the start of episode 1 orients viewers right away to location (Berlin) and period (1929). But the first sequence is a bit of a mystery. A hypnotist works with a young man and tells him, “I’ll take you back to the source of your fear.” The sequence takes viewers through various scenes that are described by the hypnotist, including the young man preparing to go to war, and a woman that the young man loves on her wedding day marrying another soldier. Viewers learn later that the hypnotist is Dr. Anno Schmidt, the brother of his subject, Detective Inspector Gereon Rath, and the groom is the same man, a plot twist that took me completely by surprise.

The series cuts to the opening credits, which appear over kaleidoscopic images from the first season. They are replaced one after the other as the previous one breaks apart and disappears from the screen. The music on the soundtrack is not melodic and builds to a crescendo, and then the screen goes black. An iris shot opens onto a train with the sound of a steam locomotive moving on tracks through a forest. The iris shot was used more widely in early cinema, and it is a nice touch for a series taking place in 1929. The train is held up and then hijacked, and its original engineers are murdered and left for dead on the side of the tracks.

At this point, none of the characters have been identified, but viewers are rewarded as the series unfolds. As is true about so many noir and neo-noir films and television series, it helps to pay attention to details. The series covers many interconnecting plot threads. Many of them, of course, get their start in season 1. Here are just a few examples of the more general themes:

◊ German citizens attempt to smuggle war materiel for the new and illegal German ghost army, the Black Reichswehr, which, its members hope, will fight to regain Germany’s pride and win back all it lost in the Great War, as World War I was called at the time.

◊ Russians in Germany try to smuggle gold through the country to help Leon Trotsky, who is living in Istanbul, mount a revolution against Joseph Stalin. One of the Russians living in Berlin, Svetlana Sorokina, betrays the Russians to agents working in the Russian embassy. Only one Russian revolutionary, Alexei Kardakov, survives.

◊ Domestic order becomes of prime importance because of the fear of foreign political unrest in the Soviet Union and other countries spilling into Germany.

◊ The Berlin police force is ready to crack down on the city’s residents because of political unrest between Communists, Social Democrats, and other political parties in Germany.

◊ Poverty and unemployment are rampant at the end of World War I, which makes it easy for people to seek others to blame for Germany’s defeat in the war.

◊ In addition to Communists, Social Democrats, and members of other parties, German citizens are quick to blame the very people who fought in the Great War. They are especially hard on war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress (PTSD) (also known as shell shock, bombshell disease, and war neuroses in the interwar period). They allege that these war veterans were too cowardly to continue fighting and are thus responsible for Germany’s defeat.

The characters in Babylon Berlin are caught up in these narrative threads to varying degrees. All the themes are tinged with elements of noir: PTSD, betrayal, murder, corruption, violence between rival gangs in the city, blackmail. And there are many characters. Almost all of them cross paths in one way or another, which makes for a very complex and satisfying story overall. It would have to be to hold viewers’ attention over three seasons (a total of twenty-eight episodes, each almost an hour long) so far.

The two main characters in the first three seasons are Inspector Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter. Rath has been transferred to vice in Berlin at his father’s request. His father tells his son that he needs to solve a specific blackmail case originating in Cologne, their hometown. He also tells Gereon that the case involves the mayor of Cologne, who is running for reelection. The upcoming election and the campaign preceding it naturally put a deadline on the investigation: The case must be solved before the information has a chance of being leaked and ruining the mayor’s chances of reelection. When Gereon Rath solves his father’s case at the end of season 1, he learns about his own father’s lies and involvement in the case he sent his son to investigate. Gereon Rath takes morphine or something similar to self-treat the lingering effects of PTSD, a result of his service in World War I. He needs to keep this a secret because he could lose his job if his superiors discovered his dependency. He is a potential danger to himself and his fellow officers if a traumatic event triggers his PTSD and he becomes incapacitated.

Charlotte (“Lotte”) Ritter lives in a small tenement-type apartment with her extended family, including her grandfather, mother, two sisters, a brother-in-law, and several of her sisters’ children. She is the main support for all of them; she picks up temporary work at the police station and works as a high-class prostitute at Moka Efti, one of Berlin’s popular upscale nightclubs. The nightclub is run by a local gang lord, Edgar Kasabian, also known as the Armenian. Viewers are introduced to Charlotte’s living situation and her work at the police station before they learn that she supplements her income at Moka Efti (and before meeting even more characters). One of Charlotte’s first work tasks at the police station is cataloging crime scene photos of various gruesome murders, which have been taken by the staff police photographer Reinhold Gräf. One of the junior officers, Stephan Jänicke, helps her get this particular job because he is attracted to her.

When Gereon Rath and his partner, Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Bruno Wolter, lead a police raid on a pornography film production, Wolter steals money that is supposed to be confiscated by the police from the filmmakers, one of whom is Johann König. König is the filmmaker that Rath is particularly interested in because of his father’s request, but he cannot explain any of this to Wolter or any other police officers. Wolter also roughs up Franz Krajewski, who ran from the scene when the vice squad showed up. Krajewski is another veteran suffering from PTSD, and he is also a police informant. Stephan Jänicke is a member of the vice squad, but he is also gathering information on Wolter, his boss. Councilor August Benda of the Berlin police department is convinced that Wolter is involved in corruption and illegal arming of civilians for another war, and Benda is not wrong.

It isn’t just the many plot threads and characters that make Babylon Berlin so compelling. Whether or not you are interested in history and historical accuracy, the attention to detail in the production of the television series also makes it worth watching. I am not a student of the Weimar Republic so I cannot say one way or the other how accurate all the historical details in the series are. But viewers should believe they are being transported to the late 1920s, and Babylon Berlin certainly succeeds on this point.

In this article, I discuss mostly what makes Babylon Berlin noir, but I was fascinated about the background setting and time period of the series to do some online research. If you, too, want more information about the film’s setting, time period, and production, you can click on each list item below for more information:

◊ “The Truth about Babylon Berlin”: This blog article is extensive. The author, Mark Vallen, offers plenty of information about the Weimar Republic, the historical setting for Babylon Berlin. He covers art, film, history. It really is a treasure trove of all the ways the series got things right in season 1.

◊ Wikipedia: Babylon Berlin: What’s great about this entry at Wikipedia is the comprehensive list of characters, both main and recurring, in the series. It’s a big help, especially for English-language speakers.

I have seen the first three seasons of Babylon Berlin (all three of which are available on DVD), but I concentrate only on the first season for this article because the series is so broad in scope. Netflix broadcast the first three seasons but then dropped it. Until recently, finding information about the fourth and fifth seasons was a bit difficult here in the United States. I haven’t been able to view the fourth season, not yet anyway. According to MHz Choice, a Kino Lorber streaming service, season 4 will be available on its service in the United States starting on June 25, 2024. The fifth season is supposedly heading into production by the end of 2024.

I’ll find a way to see the fourth and fifth seasons eventually because Babylon Berlin is worth the effort. The cinematography, the music, the costumes, the characters—all work exactly so. I can’t recommend it enough.

October 13, 2017, to October 8, 2022 (four seasons, forty episodes), broadcast dates (renewed for a fifth season)  •  Directed by Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries, Tom Tykwe  •  Written by Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries, Tom Tykwer  •  Based on novels by Volker Kutscher  •  Theme music by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, Reinhold Heil, Kristjan Järvi, Gene Pritsker, Larry Mullins  •  Series in-house band: The Moka Efti Orchestra  •  Edited by Alexander Berner, Claus Wehlisch, Antje Zynga  •  Cinematography by Bernd Fischer, Philipp Haberlandt, Christian Almesberger, Frank Griebe

Volker Bruch as Inspector Gereon Rath  •  Liv Lisa Fries as Charlotte (“Lotte”) Ritter  •  Peter Kurth as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Bruno Wolter  •  Matthias Brandt as Councilor August Benda  •  Leonie Benesch as Greta Overbeck  •  Severija Janušauskaitė as Countess Svetlana (“Sveta”) Sorokina/Lana Nikoros  •  Ivan Shvedoff as Alexei Kardakov  •  Lars Eidinger as Alfred Nyssen  •  Anton von Lucke as Stephan Jänicke  •  Johann Jürgens as Rudi Malzig  •  Mišel Matičević as Edgar Kasabian (“the Armenian”)  •  Henning Peker as Franz Krajewski  •  Fritzi Haberlandt as Elisabeth Behnke  •  Karl Markovics as Samuel Katelbach  •  Jens Harzer as Dr. Anno Schmidt  •  Ernst Stötzner as Major General Wilhelm Seegers  •  Jördis Triebel as Dr. Völcker  •  Christian Friedel as Reinhold Gräf  •  Denis Burgazliev as Colonel Trokhinl  •  Thomas Thieme as Karl Zörgiebel

Produced by ARD Degeto, Sky Deutschland, X Filme Creative Pool, Beta Film  •  Broadcast by Sky 1 channel, Sky Deutschland

The Unfaithful (1947)

Can The Unfaithful truly be called a film noir? I have some doubts, and I don’t even care much for strict adherence to categories. But it is definitely a film made for adults, and that’s always refreshing. An added plus is Zachary Scott in a leading role. I’ve always been a fan of Scott’s since I first saw him in Mildred Pierce (1945), in which he plays a perfect cad. In The Unfaithful, he is a perfectly good husband—also refreshing.

The opening credits of The Unfaithful appear over a still shot of a large suburban home with a white picket fence. In 1947, when the film was released, it was very likely the picture postcard version of the postwar American dream. A voice-over narrator tells viewers that the story takes place in Southern California as the camera pans to a car entering the driveway at the same home. He also explains that the story deals with a problem that is specific to the time but not necessarily the location where the film takes place. The implication is that the problem was a common one in postwar America.

The large suburban home belongs to the Hunters: Chris and Robert. Robert is about to come home from a business trip; Chris is going to a party hosted by Paula (played by Eve Arden in a role where she gets all the great lines, and she delivers them like she did in Mildred Pierce). Chris promises to pick up her husband at the airport early the next morning; the party will not get in the way.

Chris arrives home from the party at about one or two in the morning. Someone is waiting for her: He attacks her and forces her through the front door and into her home. They scuffle, and the camera stays outside, filming what it can from an observer’s point of view, which leaves the outcome a bit murky, at least temporarily. Robert Hunter arrives at the airport, but his wife is not there to meet him, as they had planned. He goes directly home to find police officers surrounding his perfect suburban home; some are inside that white picket fence and inside his living room.

Detective Lieutenant Reynolds is already inside, anxious to show Robert Hunter the dead body on his living room floor. Robert doesn’t recognize the dead man, and Agnes the housekeeper only knows what happened when she came downstairs after hearing Chris scream. At that time, Chris was covered in blood, and the man was already dead. Chris is now upstairs, and Robert finds her in their bedroom soon after talking to Lieutenant Reynolds.

Lawrence Hannaford, friend of the family and a lawyer, has already arrived on the scene to help Chris. He is the one to tell Lieutenant Reynolds that Robert Hunter served overseas during World War II and that he’s been back for ten or eleven months. Detective Reynolds learns that the dead man is probably Michael Tanner because of bills he finds in the man’s pockets. Chris insists, to her husband, to Lawrence Hannaford, and to Detective Lieutenant Reynolds, that she never saw the dead man before and that she doesn’t know who he is. She says that she came home late and that the man was waiting for her. He pushed her into the house, threatened her, and demanded money. She claims that she stabbed the man, with a Japanese knife that her husband sent home from Japan (proof that he was overseas), in self-defense.

(This article about The Unfaithful contains spoilers.)

The looks on Hannaford’s and Lieutenant Reynolds’s faces while Chris Hunter maintains her innocence made me think right away that they are a bit suspicious of Chris’s story. I was, too, to be honest. I was watching the film as a noir, and everyone is guilty of something, it seems, in noir. With her husband gone for two years or more, was this man really a stranger? Was she concocting a story to cover an affair that was ending even more badly than she had ever imagined it could?

Mrs. Tanner learns of her husband’s death and possible murder in the newspaper while riding the Angels Flight Railway in the Bunker Hill district of downtown Los Angeles, a poorer section of town at the time. This fact props up the original theory that the man was indeed a stranger whose motive was robbery. Mrs. Tanner goes immediately to the police station: the first complication for Chris. The second complication comes in the form of an art shop dealer, a seedy man played so well by Steven Geray. He calls Lawrence Hannaford because he has a bust of Chris Hunter sculpted by Michael Tanner. When Hannaford arrives at Barrow’s shop, Barrow tries to blackmail Hannaford into buying the sculpture for the outrageous (at the time, in 1947) sum of $10,000.

Hannaford confronts Chris Hunter about the sculpture, and she admits to knowing Michael Tanner. Against her lawyer’s advice, she goes to Martin Barrow’s shop to buy the sculpture, but it has already been sold: to Mrs. Tanner! When Hannaford learns of Chris’s actions, he begins to understand that she had a wartime affair with Michael Tanner. He confronts her again: The affair is the problem that is specific to the time because it was a common problem during wartime separation and dislocation; it is what the voice-over narrator mentions at the start of the film.

Chris Hunter will do anything to keep knowledge of the affair from her husband. Why did Chris have the affair to begin with if she is so worried about losing her husband? Was she afraid that he would die in the service? Some of this is explained during the conversation she has with her husband after he finds out about the sculpture and the affair. I thought Chris’s attitude was unrealistic because it would have been difficult to keep an affair a secret when the film makes clear that rumors were already swirling around Chris, something I imagine would happen at any period in time, whenever someone starts an affair.

The sculpture, Mrs. Tanner’s fight to clear her husband, and Martin Barrow’s greediness escalate Chris Hunter’s troubles. Martin Barrow gives Mrs. Tanner the idea of selling the sculpture to Chris’s husband, Robert, which brings everything into the open as far as the Hunter marriage is concerned. The police know all about Mrs. Tanner, Martin Barrow, and the sculpture soon enough: It’s all part of their investigation into a murder after all.

Chris Hunter’s subsequent arrest and murder trial become part of a media frenzy. The trial is not given much screen time, but viewers do get to see Chris and Robert as human beings, living well, of course, with the Hunter family fortune and Robert’s business ventures, rather than the objects of media spectacle. There’s a whiff of class division in the film, which is another favorite theme of film noir.

Robert Hunter goes to Paula’s apartment when the trial goes to the jury for deliberation. Paula turns out to be sympathetic to both Chris and Robert. She reads the riot act to Robert: Neither he nor Chris is perfect. He rushed to marry Chris before he left to serve overseas because he didn’t want to lose her to someone else. They had known each other only a few weeks or months. While talking with Paula, Robert gets a call from Lawrence Hannaford, who summons him back to the courtroom because a verdict has been reached. Chris is acquitted, and Robert goes home to find Lawrence Hannaford in his living room. Chris is leaving to stay with her sister, but Lawrence Hannaford talks to both Chris and Robert about trying a reconciliation. He admits that they won’t find it easy. They finally agree to talk.

Hannaford, played by Lew Ayres, is the last character to get a bit of screen time. He is shown driving away from the Hunter house after he has encouraged them to think things over before going through with a divorce. Hannaford deserves the last shot after convincing Chris and Robert to see that they could at least try to work out a solution for their marriage. Paula, Eve Arden’s character, deserves a hand, too. Paula, with Robert, and Lawrence, with both Chris and Robert, get them to see the situation from other perspectives, to look beyond their own gut reactions.

The plot of The Unfaithful may sound familiar: It is actually a remake of The Letter (1940), a film I describe as avant noir. Click here for my article about it. The folks at Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) think The Unfaithful is noir. If you search online at YouTube for “Noir Alley The Unfaithful,” you should be able to find Eddie Muller’s introduction (intro) and wrap-up (outro) about the film. Muller is the host of Noir Alley at TCM, and he offers a lot of great information about the film.

Eve Arden has all the snide lines in The Unfaithful, just as she did in Mildred Pierce. She comes across as shallow and insincere when viewers first meet her at a party at the start of the film, but when Robert Hunter visits her after the jury gets the case and deliberates for a verdict in Chris’s murder trial, she gives him a reality check about what his whirlwind romance and marriage were really like before he left for duty overseas. She also gives him some sound advice. Zachary Scott has a nice guy role in Robert Hunter, quite a switch from his role as the cad in Mildred Pierce. He pulls both off beautifully.

The plot of The Unfaithful never says one way or the other if the Hunter marriage will last until death do them part, but it gives a much more nuanced look at a situation that probably plagued many a returning World War II veteran and wartime bride. And it really doesn’t matter if you call it noir or not: The Unfaithful is a film worth seeing either way.

July 5, 1947, release date  •  Directed by Vincent Sherman  •  Screenplay by David Goodis, James Gunn  •  Based on the play The Letter, by W. Somerset Maugham  •  Music by Max Steiner  •  Edited by Alan Crosland Jr.  •  Cinematography by Ernest Haller

Ann Sheridan as Christina Hunter  •  Lew Ayres as Lawrence Hannaford, divorce lawyer  •  Zachary Scott as Robert Hunter  •  Eve Arden as Paula  •  Steven Geray as Martin Barrow  •  John Hoyt as Detective Lieutenant Reynolds  •  Marta Mitrovich as Mrs. Tanner  •  Jerome Cowan as the prosecuting attorney  •  Douglas Kennedy as Roger  •  Claire Meade as Martha, the Hunters’ housekeeper  •  Frances Morris as Agnes, also the Hunters’ housekeeper  •  Jane Harker as Joan  •  Peggy Knudsen as Claire  •  Heinie Conklin as a streetcar passenger  •  Jack Mower as Morrie  •  Leo White as a courtroom spectator

Distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures Inc.  •  Produced by Warner Brothers-First National