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Actually, bank manager Rose (Walter Rilla) just wanted to pick up his
daughter Silvia (Monika Peitsch) from the airport, instead he meets a
girl, Franziska (Silvana Sansoni) who claims to be her daughter's friend -
and before he knows it he has become captive of a gang of bank robbers led
by Alexander Ford (Günther Ungeheuer), a soft-spoken and intelligent,
nevertheless ruthless criminal.
The crooks want to rob Rose's bank that night, to that end they have
also taken his daughter hostage, and now they force him to help them
acquire the four keys (hence the title) needed open the bank's vault.
The four keys are in the hands of four trusted employees of the bank:
First there's Rolf Thilo (Hellmut Lange), the fiancé of Silvia, but he is
quick to give out his key once he sees her in danger.
The second key is with Margarete Wohlers (Ida Krottendorf), whom Ford
has to lure to Rose's house - where the gangsters have set up their
headquarters - by posing as her blind date. Once there though Ms Wohlers
claims the key is with her father ... and her father is shot when the
gangsters get the key from him.
The third key is with little bank clerk Richard Hiss (Hanns Lothar),
whom the gangsters meet at the race track ... only to learn he has
embezzled a bit of money himself, so theoretically he should be on their
side anyways, and accordingly he shows little resistance in handing out
the key.
The fourth key is with von Brenken, a higher up in the bank, who spends
the night at his cottage ... and he proves to be a tough cookie to crack,
not only does he feel loyal towards the bank, he also doesn't want his
affair to the bank's secretary Irene (Ellen Schwiers), who is with him, to
come out, since he is married to someone else and does want neither his
marriage nor his reputation to be ruined. Ao he locks himself and Irene
into the cellar of the cottage, and the gangsters find no way to get in
... but they do find a way to conduct car exhaust gasses into the
ventilation of the cellar, and soon Brenken and Irene have to give up.
Now our gangsters are almost there - almost because they still have to
rob the bank as such, and for some reason they have only time until
midnight, so they have to hurry quite a bit ... which is where things
finally do go wrong, because the guard (Bruno Vahl Berg) refuses to play
their game and has to be shot, but somehow his grandson - who has been
staying in the bank overnight to nobody's knowledge - somehow manages to
attract the attention of some passers-by ... and soon enough the police
arrives and starts arresting people.
In the end, Ford finds himself alone in the bank surrounded by police,
but he has Silvia as hostage and manages to force the cops to let him get
away ... and he would have succeeded, too, wouldn't it have been for
Richard Hiss, the embezzler who has since been plagued by a guilty
conscience, and who now to repent for his sins throws himself in front of
Ford's speeding car. Hiss dies of course, but as a result of his action,
the police can arrest Ford ...
A caper movie, done in a bone-dry, dead serious, almost
documentary-like style. And as a result, the film falls between quite some
stools: On one hand, the construction of the plot is often fascinating,
and the script keeps things going at a reasonably fast pace. On the other
hand though - as with many German Krimis (= crime movies), actually
- the film badly suffers from unrealistic, stilted dialogue, unbelievable
characters and character motivations (best examples: would Margarete's
father really rather die than give out his daughter's bank key, or would
Richard Hiss really throw himself in front of a car to repent for his sins
- I believe not), and quite some silly plottwists. However, all these
shortcomings of the film, paired with its dead-seriousness, make the film
enjoyable again, if on another level than intended ...
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