Review: Helmut Käutner’s Black Gravel on KL Studio Classics Blu-ray

Black Gravel is a bleak yet vital interrogation of West Germany’s struggles after World War II.

Black GravelWe often hear little about the German films made between Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda films for the Nazi Party and the works of the New German Cinema of the late ’60s, almost as if the German film industry were at a standstill during that time. But during and after World War II, the industry was churning out the escapist Heimatfilm—literally, homeland film—even after nearly all of its most talented directors had fled to the United States and France.

One of the few great filmmakers not affiliated with the Nazi Party to remain in Germany was Helmut Käutner, whose melodramas shot during WWI, such as Romance in a Minor Key and Under the Bridges, have an emotional sensitivity and fluid camerawork that recalls his compatriot Max Ophüls’s work. But because of Käutner’s suspect decision to continue working in his homeland throughout the ’40s—or, perhaps, his inability to leave—his films received little fanfare outside of Germany, aside from European film festivals.

Once Käutner was out from under the censorial thumb of Adolf Hilter and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s minister of propaganda, he sought to make amends, expressing his disdain for Nazism and directly addressing Germany’s recent transgressions through films such as Seven Journeys (the first German film released after WWII) and, later, Black Gravel, a savagely bleak portrait of a wholly corrupt Germany that’s yet to come to terms with its wartime legacy. Set in Sohnen, a small village where a U.S. military base was recently built, the latter film conveys the palpable sense of despair and disassociation felt by many Germans, who, at the time, were coping with critical shortages of food and material items. It’s an unscrupulous environment whose pervasive depravity is reminiscent of Shôhei Imamura’s Pigs and Battleships, also released in 1961 and which similarly depicts a country in a self-inflicted state of moral decay, forced to endure the ramifications of an ongoing U.S. military presence in the wake of WWII.

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In Black Gravel, nothing is in more abundant supply than the countless vices indulged at one of Sohnen’s bars, which doubles as a bordello and caters to German locals and American military personnel alike. Tensions between the two nationalities are unsurprisingly high, but it’s the infighting between the Germans, who are involved in everything from pimping to embezzlement, that causes the most damage in Käutner’s intense crime drama.

Following the exploits of a truck driver, Robert (Helmut Wildt), involved in a scam to steal a couple of loads of the gravel he delivers each week, the film presents Germany as being stuck in a purgatorial state of recovery. The titular substance takes on a literal, material function in regards to reconstruction, specifically the building of a road around the air force base. But it also serves as a potent metaphor for the volatile state of post-war Germany.

The notion of hiding from one’s sins is a recurring motif throughout, and is often symbolically attached to the town’s giant gravel pit, which doubles as a makeshift burial ground. Early on, Robert tosses a dog, who was accidentally killed by a coworker, into the gravel pit for an unceremonious burial. This same pit is also used as the grave for a couple who Robert accidentally kills with his truck later in the film. In both cases, although the murder was unintentional, the attempts to escape blame and consequences are very much deliberate.

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Käutner’s damning film sees a nation of people unwilling or unable to confront their history of violence—a notion further complicated when the owner of the aforementioned dog, Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), is revealed to be a past lover of Robert’s. Where Robert is keen to resume their affair as if nothing happened in the intervening years, Inge dreams of moving to Canada with her American husband and leaving Germany forever behind.

These two opposing impulses—one to return to “glory days” and the other to flee—drive many of the characters’ behaviors, yet both point to an inability to confront the reasons behind the German peoples’ current state of absolute moral bankruptcy. In dressing this conflict, and an overwhelming sense of paranoia and entrapment, up in the tropes of a thriller, Käutner exhibits his mastery of atmosphere and mood, but the complex social commentary of Black Gravel offers a raw and eye-opening look at Germany at a time when its cinema mostly ignored reality and its true national history was often deliberately kept secret.

Image/Sound

For this Blu-ray, Kino has transferred both the uncensored “premiere” version of the film and the slightly shorter, censored “distribution” cut, sourcing a print of the premiere version that was preserved by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in 2016. As the original camera negative was used for most of this preservation, the results are quite impressive, with a high contrast ratio and sharp image that’s consistently rich in detail. Scratches are evident from time to time, but the damage is relatively minor and typically visible for only a few seconds at a time. The distribution version is a tad washed out compared to the premiere cut, which, as houses the commentary track included on the disc, is effectively presented as the definitive version. The 16-bit audio track is suitably clear, with clean dialogue throughout.

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Extras

On his commentary track, German film critic Olaf Möller provides a comprehensive yet accessible analysis of post-WWII cinema in Germany. He highlights the importance of Helmut Käutner’s films in West Germany in the mid-20th century and traces the rise and fall of the Heimatfilm, which eventually led to a resurgence of crime films like Black Gravel in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Möller also details the controversy surrounding the film based on charges of anti-Semitism that led to one scene being cut for distribution. He clarifies that many Jewish groups disagreed with claims made against the film, as the scene in question clearly aims to sympathize with the former concentration camp prisoner after a racial slur is hurled in his direction. There are occasional dips in the conversation, but this is an indispensable commentary for anyone remotely interested in post-war German films.

Overall

Black Gravel is a bleak yet vital interrogation of West Germany’s struggles after World War II, and Kino’s Region 1 Blu-ray is one of the year’s essential releases.

Score: 
 Cast: Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur, Peter Nestler, Edeltraut Elsner  Director: Helmut Käutner  Screenwriter: Helmut Käutner, Walter Ulbrich  Distributor: Kino Lorber  Running Time: 114 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1961  Release Date: September 1, 2020  Buy: Video

Derek Smith

Derek Smith's writing has appeared in Tiny Mix Tapes, Apollo Guide, and Cinematic Reflections.

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