"Die Ratten" or "The Rats" is a German black-and-white sound film from over 60 years ago. The director is Robert Siodmak, already and Oscar nominee at this point and back from Hollywood. Here he works with a couple big names from German cinema. The ones I heard of are Maria Schell, Curd Jürgens and Ilse Steppat, the latter two played villains in Bond films later in their careers. The writer is Jochen Huth and he adapted Gerhart Hauptmann's play for the screen here. As a result, several of the actors were nominated for German Film Awards, even some I did not mention before. But the 1950s probably weren't the best decade for German cinema. And this film's success here is another example. It is really not a great watch. Schell plays her part really well, but I struggled with the script on several occasions. All the wishy washy and back and forth in terms of her wish to give up / keep her child made this one not too realistic and the mix-up at the end almost has a comedic touch. So much chaos, so much goes wrong in this film. I would have wished for more realism. Yes there are a couple good moments, but those weren't frequent enough for a film over 90 minutes and I can see why this film is almost unknown today, even here in Germany. It just isn't a great achievement and the big shock moment at the end really just makes my head shake. Looks like they wanted to go out the most memorable way, but to me it was just a desperate attempt to distract from the mediocrity in the 1.5 hours before that. I do not recommend "Die Ratten". Thumbs down.
Review of The Rats
