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Die Zärtlichkeit der Wölfe
Tenderness of the Wolves
Germany 1973
produced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler for Tango Film
directed by Ulli Lommel
starring Kurt Raab, Jeff Roden, Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Caven, Wolfgang Schenck, Brigitte Mira, Rainer Hauer, Barbara Bertram, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Heinrich Giskes, Friedrich Karl Praetorius, Karl von Liebezeit, Walter Kaltheuner, El Hedi ben Salem, Rainer Will, Inigo Natzel, Hans Tarantik, Christoph Eichhorn, Johannes Wacker, Oliver Hirschmüller, Rosel Zech, Irm Hermann, Renate Grosser, Jürgen Prochnow, Wolfgang Schneider, Hans Hirschmüller, Tana Schanzara, Rudolf Waldemar Brem, Peter Chatel, Karl Scheydt, Joachim Preen
written by Kurt Raab, music by Peer Raben
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Occupied Germany, not long after World War II: Nobody has anything
much, there's poverty everywhere, and plenty of guys would do anything for
a couple of bucks, food is hard to come by and meat's more valuable than
gold and oil combined to the common man ... and the black market is
flourishing! Times couldn't be better for petty criminal Fritz Haarmann
(Kurt Raab): Together with pimp Grans (Jeff Roden), he runs a racket to
con war widows out of their husbands' stuff to sell to the shadier
elements within the occupiers for extra food rations, he also succeeds in
luring boys of all ages to his home for sexual favours in exchange for
small sums of money ... well, especially since he never pays up but
usually kills the boys and turns them into meat - to sell on to the
unsuspecting public, or to buy himself favours with. Eventually, Fritz
is picked up by the police ... but not for the killings, they have no
place in the soon-to-be "Wirtschaftswunder"-Germany, but because
he has all sorts of connections to criminal elements at all stops of the
black market - so police soon enough employ him as their snitch, promising
to turn a blind eye on occasions in exchange for good intelligence even.
Haarmann doesn't disappoint them, and especially him posing as a police
inspector himself (under the not very watchful eyes of the police) gets
him places - but eventually, more and more people, from Grans to his
almost-girlfriend (Ingrid Caven) to his neighbour who has always hated him
(Margit Carstensen) find out what goes on behind his walls ... and even in
a society as broken as Germany was at the time, murderers of children are
never fully tolerated ... After having been in quite a few
Rainer Werner Fassbinder movies, Fassbinder produced actor Ulli Lommel's
first solo feature as a director - and that movie still owes a lot to
Fassbinder, stylistically, And even if Tenderness of the Wolves
never quite reaches the master's heights regarding depth of characters but
also irony and edginess, it is certainly a most disturbing movie, first
and foremost thanks to its very ambivalent villain and also to Kurt Raab's
portrayal of him that's at times disturbingly likeable even. Plus, without
going out of its way in terms of sets and costumes, the portrayal of post
war Germany (even if the real Fritz Haarmann was executed in 1925 already)
is pretty spot on and serves the story very well. In all, a very
impressive film, really!
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