|
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Fallen on hard times, actor André has to take a job playing a hardened
criminal in a tourist trap disguised as gangsters' dump, called Die Rote
Katze, where he & a bunch of other actors playing criminals have to
stage continuous barroom brawls. However, playing the criminal, he catches
the eye of rich American tourist Gloria (Angelika Hauff), who mistakes him for
a real criminal & wants to play with fire a little ... & Gloria's
father Mr Jefferson (Jakob Tietdke) owns the Halifax, an immensely valuable
diamond that 2 real criminals, Moustache (Otto Matthies) & Pitou (Gustav
Knuth) desperately want to try to get their hands on ... & for some reason
they think it's a great idea to incorporate André intlo their plans - &
after a bit of persuasion André even agrees. Somehow Moustache & André
even succeed in robbing the Halifax, but somehow, they failed to bring the
Halifax with them (!), & from here on major confusion ensues, with everyone
being in possion of the Halifax at one point or another without knowing it
& both Mr Jefferson & his wife (Trude Hesterberg) - the legal owners of
the Halifax - being thrown into prison for stealing the Halifax, but in the
end, Mr Jefferson gets back the Halifax, André gets Gloria & Moustache
& Pitou get a few years in prison ... With the beginning of the
sound-era, Heinz Rühmann rose to fame playing the likeable everyman in a sheer
endless string of light comedies, & he would continue to make them when
Hitler rose to power & all during World War 2. After the war, when all that
was popular in Nazi Germany seemed suspicious, his creer ran into dire straits
... & Das Geheimnis der Roten Katze was an attempt to revive past
glories. As a film though, this light crime comedy with musical interludes is
rather dull, shallow & not particularly funny (as in fact were many of
Rühmann's pre-war comedies) with nothing to really give it redeeming value Rühmann's
career though wouldn't pick up momentum again until the 1960's, when he played
(amongst many other things) his most memorable roles as Good Soldier
Schwejk, Inspector Maigret & of course Father
Brown. His last role by the way was a bigger supporting part in Wim
Wenders' Far Away so Close.
|