It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958)

It seems this is not a place to watch movies. No use to me.

An ititerant peddler (Michel Simon) finds the body of a young girl in a Swiss forest and alerts an inspector from a neighboring town who'd once been kind to him. When Inspector Matthai (Heinz Ruhmann) gets there, he finds a mob eager to lynch the peddler who soon commits suicide in his cell after a grueling interrogation. Matthai believes the old man was innocent and the savage razor slaying the work of a serial killer prowling the woods along a major highway. No longer on the police force, the ex-inspector sets out to catch the killer by renting a roadside gas station and hiring a young woman with an 8 year-old daughter to be his housekeeper with the intention of using the child as bait... That's a dangerous game to play in this gripping cat-and-mouse thriller that's also a fairly good police procedural, considering the resources and lack of forensics at the time. Gert Frobe is chilling as the misogynist psychopath and it was this performance that led the producers of GOLDFINGER to cast him as the titular megalomaniac.

Es geschan am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight) is directed by Ladislao Vajda and collectively written by Vajda, Hans Jacoby and Friedrich Durrenmatt, from the Novel The Promise. It stars Heinz Ruhmann, Sigfrit Steiner, Siegfried Lowitz, Michel Simon and Gert Frobe. Music is by Bruno Canfora and cinematography is by Ernst Bolliger and Heinrich Gartner.When a child is found murdered in the woods, Oberleutnant Matthai (Ruhmann) promises the child's parents he will find the killer. It's a promise that weighs heavy on him, causing him to go outside of his rational thinking to hopefully lure the killer into a trap.The source material has proved ripe for picking as regards film adaptations, latterly with a big Hollywood production directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson (The Pledge 2001). There's a whole bunch of themes bubbling away in the story, all of which are handled superbly by the makers. At its core it's a criminal investigation fuelled by an obsession, but morality and mob justice play a big part in proceedings as well.Lashings of intrigue permeate the atmosphere, as does a number of suspenseful scenes as the child killer enters the fray and we see him operating his vile shtick. The sequences of him at home, a complete milquetoast to a harpy wife, simmer away with deadly expectation, the acting superb. The psychological studies of the key characters carry considerable weighty merit, always niggling away at the audience, keeping us hooked to the very last frame.With chills (for instance the hand puppet scenes are blood curdling), expressionistic touches and a film noir sense of the human condition gone wrong, it's a film deserving of a more wider and appreciative audience. Personally I prefer the ending that Durrenmatt rewrote as Das Versprechen (the author wasn't happy with Es geschan am hellichten Tag's resolution), and that was the ending Penn went for in The Pledge. This is not in the same class as Fritz Lang's "M", but it deserves to be on the same shelf, and that is praise indeed. 8/10

Once I met an arabian, and while talking about cinema, he said, for knowing this movie he would forget five of his lovely movies, after watching it ! G. Fröbe and H. Rühmann are playing such fabulous, that you think somebody inconvenient is entering your near forest. Everybody I know is worn down after this Horror-criminal, where NO violence or anything bizarre is shown! Turn off the lights.One of the best movies of the 1950ies.