"Es geschah am hellichten Tag" or "It Happened in Broad Daylight" is a German 95-minute black-and-white film from the late 1950s, so this one will have its 60th anniversary soon. It was directed by Ladislao Aajda, who also adapted Friedrich Dürrenmatt's novel (with Dürrenmatt himself) for the screen. Today, this one is seen as one of Germany's finest films, especially in terms of crime drama. Heinz Rühmann is almost in every scene from start to finish and he was nominated for a German Film Award for his portrayal here. Same goes for Gert Froebe, who has considerably less screen-time though and does pretty much not appear at all in the first half of the film. This one is really all about the main character's (a police detective's) relationship with his employer and also about a man who was arrested despite being innocent.For Froebe, his villain role here, may have been one of the main reasons who he got cast in his career-defining role as Auric Goldfinger, so even if he lost the German Film Award (just like Rühmann), it was a very important film for him. Rühmann, in his mid 50s here, was mostly known in German for the comedy films he made earlier in his career that made him a big star, but here he shows us that he also definitely has the talent for darker, more gritty films. It was quite fun to watch him with the serious material in here. Overall, this was a quite good watch in terms of story, performances and atmosphere. I think you may want to check this one out. Thumbs up for "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" and I see the film was popular enough that they made a sequel several decades later shortly after Rühmann's death, with Joachim Król playing the main character, but I have not seen that one. And there are more sequels from outside Germany. But this one here is the original. Go see it.

We stand here before one of the most important German speaking movies of the second half of the 20st century, one of the first explicit series (child-) killer movies and one of the most frightful ones. It contains a creme De la creme of the best German actors of the fifties. However, although the movie plays in Switzerland, all Swiss actors speak High-German and are without exception in side roles. The male main role of Kommissar Dr. Matthäi is played by Heinz Rühmann, who was the most popular German actor of the 20st century. The female main role was given by the Hungarian-Catalan director László Vajda to his girlfriend María Rosa Salgado who was dubbed. The fact that not one example of Bündner German is heard in this movie, although the series killer lives obviously in Chur, the capital of the Grisons, is strange. Even stranger is that the only used Bündner German Name "Huonder" is constantly mispronounced (by Max Haufler who should have known it better). However, two questions arise: First, why did the director agree to Rühmann and his scenario-writer to change dramatically the end? In Dürrenmatts novel "Der Verdacht", Schrott is not caught, and the movie has therefore a completely different face. Second, and more important (and hanging together with the first question): What is this movie about, really? Several times, we hear from the mouth of Dr, Matthäi about the importance of using "intution" in clearing a criminal case. But why, then, is it Matthäi who, in the end, is responsible for the suicide of the chap-man? Matthäi is even fully unable to see his guilt: To the question, on the next day, why the innocent chap-man is found hung up in his cell, he laconically answers: Because he was old, sick, did not want to go on anymore ... . What is it then, that drives Matthäi to catch the real killer? Really his pity with the children? - Hardly, because his character does know or at least not admit such feelings. As a proof, he does not doubt one second about the legitimation of his "method" when he engages Mrs. Haller and her daughter, because he intends to (mis-)use the blond little girl as a guinea-pig in order to attract Schrott. Not even then, when he realizes that the little girl has already escaped several times without him knowing it and when he speaks himself about a "miracle" that nothing has yet happened, he stops his action. This means, that Matthäi rather accepts the death of the little girl as long as he is just capable of catching the murderer. This is an idea about police work which is practically identical with the idea of the criminal. Admittedly, the serious killer stands on the other side of Good and Bad than Matthäi, but somebody who is intending to take the loss of the girl in order to solve his case is so-to-say the twin of the criminal, the line between Good and Bad getting almost non-existent.

Truly one of the superlative thriller/mystery films of all time. I saw it in the original German on Austria TV and it is still gripping. I thought it is so Hitchcockian then I realized the musical technique--the sudden loud shrieks in the orchestra--at the moment of contact with the killer, his house and the car. This is Psycho. The film mood and pace is Psycho. Then again, I realized the film and the Broadway play which received Tony nomination were both celebrated shortly before Psycho was made. Could it be that Hitch made the perfect horror film as a paean to this great masterpiece. One of the few films of the genre I will set next to Hitchcock and it does indeed hold its place superbly. Can any compliment be higher. If you love Hitchcock as I do, you must get the film--the original German print of 1958 not the TV version and not the American remake with Nicholson, as fine as it is. If you understand German watch it first that way. Unforgettable.

Once I met an arabian, and while talking about cinema, he said, for knowing this movie he would forget five of his lovely movies, after watching it ! G. Fröbe and H. Rühmann are playing such fabulous, that you think somebody inconvenient is entering your near forest. Everybody I know is worn down after this Horror-criminal, where NO violence or anything bizarre is shown! Turn off the lights.One of the best movies of the 1950ies.