Death is My Trade (1977)

Original title

Aus einem deutschen Leben

Directed by

Theodor Kotulla

Genre

drama film, biographical film

Country

Germany

Runtime

2h 25m

Rated

12

Rating

7.7 of 10 from 13 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This German biographical drama follows the life of a Nazi officer who becomes the commandant of a concentration camp. It shows key episodes of his career and his emotional detachment from the atrocities he commits.

bleakclinicalunsettlingslow-burnhistoricalsomberdetacheddisturbing

What happens

Death is My Trade (German: Aus einem deutschen Leben) is a 1977 German film, which is based on the script of director Theodor Kotulla, starring Götz George in the leading role. The script is based on the French novel La mort est mon métier by Robert Merle, which was published in 1952 (English edition: Death Is My Trade). Like the novel, the film is partly based on interrogation records of the trial against Rudolf Höß, SS-officer and commander of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, as well as on his autobiographical notes. He made these notes first during his time as a British POW, then, after he was extradited, as a Polish prisoner in 1946/47, before he was executed as a convicted war criminal. Instead of using the name Rudolf Höß, whose life was the model for the film, the pseudonym Franz Lang is used, in order that he remain anonymous. The real Rudolf Höß had gone into hiding allegedly working as a boatman after World War II using this pseudonym until he was unmasked and arrested in 1946. The film is divided into 14 different episodes, which describe fragmentary and important scenes of Franz Lang's life. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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