"Die Sünderin" or "The Sinner" or "The Story of a Sinner" is a West German German-language movie from 1951, so this one has its 65th anniversary this year. Despite color films existing in Germany already a decade earlier, this one here is a black-and-white film. The runtime according to IMDb is 100 minutes, but the one I saw was considerably shorter, barely made it üast the 80-minite mark, but it also was without credits. Still, there probably exist several versions of this film, maybe also due to the (then) scandalous scenes. The director is Willi Forst and it is one of his most known works. His co-writers Marischka and Menzel worked on other pretty prestigious projects themselves during their long careers. Marischka was also a successful actor. But back to this one here. It caused lots of controversy back in the day because of the nudity depicted in here and it shows that it is so incomparable compared to today's standards in what we see as offensive or inappropriate. With all this controversy, people almost forgot about the story. The main character is a prostitute, so the nudity actually makes sense. She is played by Hildegard Knef in one of her career-defining performances. Herman is played by Gustav Fröhlich and he managed a successful transition from silent films to sound films. Both give decent performances overall I guess, but I personally did not find either of the two really likable enough to deeply care for what happens to them. Besides, Knef's constant voice-over narration 8sometimes pretty over-the-top) gets somewhat annoying at some point, maybe halfway into the film that one loses even more interest in it. This is quite a pity as the first 30-40 minutes were quite interesting and enjoyable when we learn who the characters are and what they are all about. It's also nice that the focus was really on 2 characters only and did not include any pointless additional material or references that would have been forgettable eventually anyway. But still, because of the decline in quality and the weak ending, I mean the final relatively unrealistic plot twist about who dies (it's not love in my opinion, it's giving up yourself for the other and I don't like it), I just cannot give this movie a thumbs-up or recommend checking it out. Quite a shame. If it had stayed the way it was early on, my decision certainly would have looked different. Watch something else instead.
Review of The Sinner
