Der Verlorene

The Nuremberg trials were closed too hastily in 1949. In postwar Germany, keeping silent was a way of coming to terms with the past. Many people started to live comfortably with a new set of commonly accepted lies. In 1951, this politically prevailing tone was disturbed by a man, Peter Lorre, who analyzed this particular situation by making a film. Der Verlorene talks about things nobody actually wanted to talk or even think about, and it was quickly hushed up. Peter Lorre’s return to Germany failed and came to an end together with his film, which was screened in German cinemas for only ten days.
This film can be read in many different ways: dialogues between shadows and men, shadows and light, men and background, appearing and disappearing, dependence and complicity, murder and suicide. In fact, Lorre also implied his own life story as an actor as well as his harsh experiences as an emigrant, which he was able to link together in an extraordinarily thrilling way. The film diagnoses what was to be Lorre’s fate: he never found his place again.
Nobody wanted to deal with the truth, presented in so artistically convincing a form, and therefore the more dangerous. The dialogue expressed what no one wanted to hear. After the failure of Der Verlorene Lorre, disappointed and bitter, went back to Hollywood. (Ulrike Ottinger)

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