Re:Friedrich Duerrenmatt's "Der Verdacht" (Score 1)

Dürrenmatt has written three so called "crime novels" in the fifties: Das Versprechen (The Pledge, The Promise), der Verdacht (The Suspicion), der Richter und sein Henker (the Judge and his Executioner/Hangman, film with Jon Voight by Maximilian Schell). All three books are relatively easy to read, certainly when compared later works as "The Assignment". All three were recently re-issued in english, "The Pledge" now comes with Nicholson on the cover.

The b/w movie from the fifties "Es geschah am Hellichten Tag" has IMHO the big drawback of Rühmann as the main character. Rühmann was IMHO never an actor, he always played himself, and it shows.

Similarly, I don't think Jack Nicholson can ever escape his "mentally deranged" typecast, I'm still always reminded of Cuckoo's Nest/Shining when he starts smiling his evil grin. I think the real genius was Polanski -- in Chinatown, Nicholson had to wear this white bandage on his nose, so for most of the movie you didn't have to look at his all-too-familiar face and think "when is he going to turn crazy"? But I've yet to see The Pledge.

The "Es geschah am hellichten Tag" film only touches on the taboo of sexual abuse, and the perception of that issue was totally different in the Switzerland of the fifties and the U.S. of today. Dürrenmatt wrote the script first (and later transformed it into a novel), the original intent of the film was actually to warn innocent children from the bogeyman. This was the fifties, hey.

The film today has IMHO documentary character only, for it shows a non-Heidi-cheese-banks-chocolate view of Switzerland in the late fifties. Well at least for us swiss it has documentary character. You get to see what gas stations in rural areas looked like...