The Escape in the Silent

Plot

Construction works carried out in a small village in Thuringia reveal the corpse of a member of the Waffen-SS, who seems 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 death cause. At first, they suspect the owner of the lands in which the body was 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

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." The Eulenspiegel magazine's reviewer commented that "Finally... One must see the film, for the sake of the elusive culmination of its plot." The German Film Lexicon regarded it as "a criminal drama, the powerful statement of which is weakened by formalistic deficiencies."