Wenn es Nacht wird auf der Reeperbahn/When Night Falls on the Reeperbahn (1967, also known as Uneasy Summer) is Rolf Olsen’s first St Pauli film and his first exploitation film shot in colour. As a result it lacks some of the grittiness associated with his earlier black and white productions.
When a female high school student stumbles home from a party in a state of shock with the clothes half torn off her body, she gets driven over and accidentally killed by a hit and run driver. The subsequent investigations reveal that she had taken LSD.
Danny Sonntag (Erik Schumann), a journalist covering the drug scene in Hamburg, gradually discovers that it’s run by a gang of spoilt rich kids from good homes who use the drug trade to get their kicks. They also use LSD to make young girls willing to feature in porn and also rent them out to some of the city’s most well respected businessmen.
In contrast to his subsequent St Pauli films, this production does not yet star Curd Jürgens. It is also noticeably more action-driven than the following films that, though not devoid of action, frequently have a more melodramatic focus.
Instead Nacht stars Erik Schumann… though “starring” is probably a weak choice of words as the plot steers clear of a single traditional hero figure and instead at various times focuses on a range of different characters: the journalist, law enforcement, different (often juvenile) members of the underworld or female high school students (clearly played by young adults).
Schumann is, however, also the off screen narrator who gives the movie a semi-documentarian panache to its controversial topic. And Schumann, at least for yours truly, is ultimately THE main discovery of this film.
I’ve always been somewhat aware of this actor without taking too much notice but it is through his involvement in some of the Olsen films that I started to become a fan. Though reasonably well known he never really hit the levels of stardom he would have deserved. Incredibly talented and oozing charisma, he was equally able to play romantic leads, comedic roles, heroes and villains. It’s just a pity that he never played in an Edgar Wallace film.
For Olsen we had already met him playing delightful sleazeballs but here we have him as a bona fide proto-Dirty Harry action figure who in the course of his journalistic work can fight rough and hard but also is not afraid to take a beating and walk around with his face smashed in.
Indeed, whatever else you may think of Olsen as a director, if there is one thing he deserves credit for, it is for creating a personal stock company of actors, either younger up and coming ones before they became truly popular or older talent who never quite hit the genuine big time.
These performers were not interchangeable faces but carried clearly defined functions within his St. Pauli and Reeperbahn films.
In Nacht we first meet Heinz Reincke, a popular local actor, who would become Curd Jürgens’ regular down to Earth buddy. In this film his character is still somewhat morally ambiguous given that he plays a pimp and a blackmailer who is not averse to using knuckle dusters but in the finale he clearly takes sides with Danny Sonntag and helps rid the area of the criminal scourge.
In the St Pauli series taken as a whole, Reincke would ultimately embody nothing but the spirit of St Pauli itself. He’d play sailors, barkeepers, locals, men who belong to the district rather than rule it. In the German versions his voice has a strongly regional dialect. His characters would have an earthy realism and street level authenticity. He is the Everyman the hero can always count on. And he’d always be up for a drink or a joke.
In Nacht, Wepper plays a member of the gang and the one responsible for creating the LSD (seemingly with the help of a simple chemistry set). Traumatised by some of what’s been happening, he goes on a rampage and turns against his former buddies but may find salvation with the help of his young kid-sister.
Konrad Georg had previously played German TV’s Kommissar Freytag, one of the country’s first serial TV investigators. When he shows up in an Olsen production, he invariably represents the fading official, police commissioners or inspectors, men who technically have power but lack real leverage in St Pauli.
Now that is all very interesting but tell me about the trash elements we can expect, Holger….
Glad you asked….
We literally have a melange of sex, drugs and violence.
The film features nudity and brutal torture. One girl gets her face cut up with a knife and some of the gang members are clearly on the psychopathic side. There’s female mud wrestling and abuses of power on various levels. Girls get corrupted and driven into suicide. A father pays for sex with his son’s girlfriend.
One particular party scene, shot with aggressive lighting effects, colour filters, and disorienting edits, also revels in showing close ups of lustily leering sweating older men’s faces on top of beautiful young girls.
Throughout the whole film, it is made clear that the real threat to society does not lie with individual villains but in compromised systems. Crime is not an external threat to social order but instead it is woven into everyday life and not just supported but also ultimately created by pandering to the whims and demands of the upper classes and their bored and emotionally weak and immoral offspring.
Oh, and though I am fairly certain that David Lynch never saw this film, I am equally convinced he took the snakeskin jacket worn by Feuer-Hotte (Jürgen Draeger), the gang’s dapper but devious leader, as inspiration for Nicolas Cage’s fashion choices in Wild at Heart.
To be continued….
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