Der rote Rausch (1962)

When Josef Stief (Klaus Kinski) escapes from the mental clinic he is held in after killing four women wearing red coral necklaces, he finds refuge in a little village near an Eastern European border. There he calls himself Martin and is mistaken as a refugee from behind the Iron Curtain. The shy “Martin”, prone to wildly erratic behaviour, is subjected to the suspicions of the locals but manages to befriend a woman (Brigitte Grothum) whose husband, also called Martin, has gone missing for years after operating near the border and is presumed dead, forcing her to raise her daughter (Christine Ratej) on her own. “Martin” has no recollection of the killings he had committed but a trip to the nearby city reveals the truth of his past to him and results in a full blown manhunt in which emotional villagers decide to take the law into their own hand. 

The best and most important Kinski role you (likely) haven’t seen. 

 Filmed at the height of the Edgar Wallace boom in Germany, Der rote Rausch (tr. “The Red Rage”, a term used by a psychologist to describe Martin’s temporary murderous impulses) is as far removed from the Rialto series as a contemporary German language crime drama can be. Yet, despite (or maybe: because) of this, the film is highly fascinating for a variety of different reasons.

• This is Klaus Kinski’s first leading role. 
• The film dispenses of any gimmicky effects and plot twists. It’s a serious drama, more M (1931) than Edgar Wallace. 
• Rather than being set in an imaginary London, the film takes place in a very real contemporary Germany/Austria. Just a year after the Berlin Wall was begun, this production uses the plight of refugees from East Germany as part of its narrative.
• Der rote Rausch was not a commercial success and after its cinematic release had only once been shown on German television in 1967 and subsequently been considered lost until its rediscovery in 2002 when the original negative was found in a mislabeled can.
• It features a number of supporting players that will be familiar from other more typical Krimis.
• For a Krimi this is also a fairly bloodless affair. The only murders take place off screen and prior to the beginning of this plot. The focus is much more on the drama between the characters and yet always with a constant threat of possible lurking danger. 

 The original serialised magazine novel this has been adapted from is from 1952 and featured Martin as a possible war returnee. Filmed in 1962, this was updated for the film. 

Shot in rural Austria and Vienna, it is never explicitly stated what border area this film is exactly set in. Instead we get constant references to “von drüben” (=“from over there”), a popular catch phrase to describe East Germany in particular but also neighbouring Eastern European countries in general. 

Very likely it is the Hungarian/Austrian border that is depicted, a popular area at the time for East German residents trying to escape into the West though it may just as well have been similar looking border areas in Germany itself. 

 Though by then he had already appeared in a handful of supporting roles in Edgar Wallace Krimis, Rialto itself would not avail of Klaus Kinski as the leading man until later in the 1960s. 

In 1961, a year before production to Der rote Rausch began, the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel had featured him in a very prominent 14-page lead article and cover story. The focus of this piece was very much on Kinski’s theatrical performances and recitations of classic authors. Far from being hero-worshipping, the tone was often quite derogatory and highly critical in its appraisal of Kinski as a performer. 

And yet unsurprisingly having such a prominent piece in a major magazine, was the best possible PR for him and ensured that his profile was instantly raised so a move to a lead role in a movie was the next logical step. 

And true to form this film cleverly played with both facets of Kinski’s public persona at the time as we get Kinski, the resident madman, as well as Kinski, the reciter of classic works of fiction. 

His Martin is a major tour-de-force mixing moments of bug eyed intensity with subtle shy cues full of sadness and desperation. The truth of Martin’s violent past is only gradually revealed in full to both the character and the audience. Martin, despite his obvious anguish and mental difficulties and fits of violence, always remains a sympathetic though tragically doomed character. 

In one scene we see Kinski performing the tale of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant in a puppet theatre for a young girl. This was one of his popular recitations and is a piece that is available in whole on Spoken Word collections. 

Der rote Rausch stands and falls by Kinski’s performance. All the other actors are highly capable but some of their scenes sans-Kinski can drag a little bit. 

By far the weakest part of this production is the relationship between quasi-widow Katrin (Brigitte Grothum) and Martin. Her sympathy and borderline romantic feelings for him just don’t appear realistic even given the fact that his assumed name and his fate reminds her of her long lost husband. He is just way too unhinged to ultimately make this relationship believable. 

The previous year the two actors had first appeared alongside each other for Rialto-Wallace Die seltsame Gräfin/The Strange Countess and in 1962 they also acted together in Das Gasthaus an der Themse/The Inn on the River. The next year Grothum also played the female lead in the non Rialto-Wallace Der Fluch der gelben Schlange/The Curse of the Yellow Snake.

Grothum seems to have got on well with the notoriously difficult Kinski and says that a lot of his behaviour was just a publicity stunt. 

For Der rote Rausch he apparently spread the rumour that he was going back to nature and sleeping in a tent on the lake, causing paparazzi to try and capture some sneaky tabloid fodder while Kinski was indeed quietly staying in the crew hotel where he also had his regular breakfast in polite company with the rest of the cast and crew. 

 In the 1950s director Wolfgang Schleif was mainly known for a series of lighthearted comedies. Der rote Rausch was one of the last feature films he made before predominantly switching to a career in television.

 Schleif had directed Grothum already in her star making performance as Das Mädchen Marion (tr. “The Girl Marion”, 1956). 

For Der rote Rausch he together with cinematographer Walter Partsch successfully captured moody black and white reed fields in stark contrast to most of his usual films. This style of photography appears to have been inspired by some of the more realistic films coming out of Italy and Continental Europe at the time.

Dieter Borsche (Die toten Augen von London/Dead Eyes of London, Der schwarze Abt/The Black Abbot, Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse/Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard, Der Henker von London/The Mad Executioners, Das Phantom von Soho/The Phantom of Soho) is the director of the mental institution who treated Martin and his character spouts a lot of pseudo-scientific baloney while evaluating his patient’s mental state. 

Internationally Sieghardt Rupp is best known for his part in A Fistful of Dollars (1964). In this film he plays Katrin’s long suffering admirer and eventual leader of the mob against Martin. 

Born in 1919, Jochen Brockmann is one of those actors who only started appearing in films fairly late in life. He was around 40 when he began making an impact in mainly villainous roles and can be seen in the very first Rialto-Wallace Der Frosch mit der Maske/Fellowship of the Frog (1959) as well as maybe the quintessential Krimi Der Hexer/The Ringer (1964) and standalone non-Edgar Wallace Krimi Das Rätsel der grünen Spinne (tr. “The Mystery of the Green Spider”, 1960). In Der rote Rausch he can be seen in a more sympathetic but equally authoritarian role as Katrin’s father, desperately attempting to help his daughter overcome her feeling of loss over her missing husband. 

The interplay between all the characters, the sense of suspicion and paranoia surrounding Martin, the increasing levels of hostility towards him and his ultimate fate (no spoilers here), are as well presented and tragic as they are understandable. 

For all intends and purposes Der rote Rausch should feature in any Top 10 list of best or most important Kinski performances. It does feature all his typical mannerisms but way before they became routine and cliché and also serves as a cinematic reminder of his classic dramatic skills. 

And yet this is one production that is practically unheard of outside of Germany due to it not being available in an English friendly versions (a popular complaint for this blog) and even in Germany this film has been under appreciated and unduly forgotten for far too long. A flop at the time, the public obviously preferred their Krimis to be less realistic and instead demanded more Edgar Wallace type movies. It is, however, definitely a film in dire need of a reappraisal. 

Addendum:

Following a discussion of this film and blog post on the excellent Krimi related Facebook Group Hello, This Is Edgar Wallace Speaking, I was pointed to a YouTube upload that had an English subtitled version of this film.  The original German DVD did not have any subs of any kind (not even in German) so I suspect that these are fan subs. Either way, thanks for everyone who helped provide and share this as this is a fantastic way to finally make this film available to a wider audience.