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Und Jimmy Ging zum Regenbogen
And Jimmy Went to the Rainbow's Foot
West Germany / Austria 1971
produced by Luggi Waldleitner for Roxy Film, Wien-Film
directed by Alfred Vohrer
starring Alain Noury, Horst Tappert, Konrad Georg, Horst Frank, Judy Winter, Doris Kunstmann, Heinz Moog, Eva Zilcher, Heinz Baumann, Herbert Fleischmann, Peter Pasetti, Friedrich G. Beckhaus, Paul Edwin Roth, Klaus Schwarzkopf, Jochen Brockmann, Bruno Dallansky, Karl Walter Diess, Franz Elkins, Anita Buchegger, Paul Glawion, Mascha Gonska, Bernd Ander, Michael Janisch, Egon von Jordan, Walter Regelsberger, Robert Werner, Herbert Kersten, Elisabeth Stiepl, Walter Varndal, Ruth Leuwerik, Ludwig Hirsch, Günter Tolar, Karl Hrusa
screenplay by Manfred Purzer, based on the novel by Johannes Mario Simmel, music by Erich Ferstl
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Manuel Aranda (Alain Noury), a young and inconspicuous man from
Argentina, arrives in Vienna after receiving news that his father has been
murdered there. Curiously enough, he has been poisoned by an elderly
employee in a book shop, Valerie Steinfeld (Ruth Leuwerik), who then
killed herself after informing the police, and who had no criminal history
whatsoever. This makes Manuel very curious, and he decides to investigate
more. Soon he meets and falls in love with Irene (Doris Kunstmann), niece
of Valerie Steinfeld, who tries to help him in his investigations even but
doesn't know much. It seems the owner of the shop Valerie worked at,
Landau (Konrad Georg), knows more, but he won't tell, and his sister (Eva
Zilcher) is very protective of him. At the same time, Manuel has come
iunto the crosshairs of international espionage, and the French, Russians
and Americans all want to come into the possession of Manuel's dad's
encoded notes as they're to contain the formula of some poison gas.
However, since Manuel is under police protection, they try to dripfeed him
with the backstory of Valerie Steinfeld's past to keep him in Vienna, and
thus get him in touch with brothel madame Nora Hill (Judy Winter), who has
been a double agent in World War II, and who was Valerie's best friend
back when. Now Valerie had a son, Heinz (Franz Elkins), a model Nazi if
there ever was one, but also the son of a Jew, which got him expelled from
school by professor Friedjung (Paul Edwin Roth), apparently a spurned
lover of Valerie's who has never gotten over the fact that she chose a Jew
over him. So Valerie, Nora, Landau, and lawyer Forster (Horst Tappert)
make up a scheme to Aryanize the boy by claiming in court that Landau is
the actual father of Heinz. Thing is, as soon as Heinz is Aryan, he
insists on going to the front to serve his Führer, and he's shot in the
head only a couple of days in. Valerie has never forgiven the man who
bullied her son for being a half Jew and drove her to Aryanize him,
Friedjung. And of course, in the end Friedjung turns out to be Manuel's
father - but as soon as he learns that, he's shot dead by one of the
agents after him who have since gotten their hands on the poison gas and
no more need for him. In the 1960s, director Alfred Vohrer has
been one of the key players in the then enormously popular krimi
genre in Germany, especially due to his long association with the Edgar
Wallace series, but as all things do, these films went out of
vogue with the turn of the decade, with this film at hand being only a
logical consequence of the development, A political thriller rooted much
more in the then current here and now - Cold War - as well as in history -
World War II -, a stark contrast to the wonderworld of the Edgar
Wallace movies. As a consequence, Vohrer's directorial style
is rooted more in realism and ditches all gimmickry and self irony of the
later entries into above series - and the result shows very solid
craftsmanship with the occasional moment of kitsch, on the directorial
side of things. When it comes to the script (and truth to be told, I
haven't read the source novel, a bestseller in the German language market
in its time), one can't denie that the film is terribly convoluted, and it
seems the two narrative strains (the Cold War and the World War II one)
are forced together for maximum impact rather than grown out of the story,
especially since its never clear why Manuel Aranda is such an important
figure in the bigger scheme of things or why he has to be killed. Now
sure, while the story's told, it flows very nicely, but one can't help
feeling it asks more questions than it ever bothers to answer, just for
suspense's sake. The result of all of this is an ok thriller, especially
when seen through the glasses of nostalgia, but not something that's
really memorable in any way.
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