The Escape in the Silent ()Flucht ins Schweigen on DEFA Foundation's website. is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Siegfried Hartmann. It was released in 1966.
Plot Construction works carried out in a small village in Thuringia reveal the corpses of two members of the Waffen-SS, who seem to have been buried during the end of the Second World War - although no fighting took place in the area. Two forensics experts from the People's Police Investigations Department, Stetter and Hoffmann, arrive in the village to determine the cause of death. At first, they suspect the then owner of the property where the bodies were discovered; but after questioning him, he is murdered. A golden coin they found leads them to a local woman named Helga, and they reveal the truth behind the matter.
Cast Fritz Diez as Stetter Dieter Wien as Hoffmann Marita Böhme as Helga Klink Regine Albrecht as Inge Klink Jiří Vršťala as Wills Hans-Joachim Hanisch as Zschunke Hans Hardt-Hardtloff as Schindler Karlheinz Liefers as priest Wolfgang Brunecker as Möller Rolf Ludwig as Karl Reinhold Horst Schön as SS man Ernst-Georg Schwill as police clerk Siegfried Weiß as jeweler Günter Sonnenberg as Heinz Klink Willi Neuenhahn as the wheelwright
Production The script was based on Wolfgang Held's novel, The Death Pays with Ducats, published at 1964.
Reception At 1966, Albert Wilkening wrote that "this thriller continues the honored tradition of DEFA, by combining the genre with contemporary issues, as well as an important historical and political background."Andrea Guder. Genosse Hauptmann auf Verbrecherjagd: der Krimi in Film und Fernsehen der DDR. ARCult Media (2003). . Page 190. The Eulenspiegel magazine's reviewer commented that "Finally... One must see the film, for the sake of the elusive culmination of its plot."Eulenspiegel Magazine, 1966. . Page 24. The German Film Lexicon regarded it as "a criminal drama, the powerful statement of which is weakened by formalistic deficiencies."Flucht ins Schweigen on zweitausendundeins.de.
References
External links Flucht ins Schweigen on the IMDb. Flucht ins Schweigen original poster on ostfilm.de.