Black Gravel 10/19/24

Keeping relations good with the U.S. and NATO may have doomed Helmut Käutner’s grim tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany. The story is a sordid swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all of them down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen brews trouble for displaced women and dispirited men trying to survive in the new ‘economic miracle.’ We’ve seen nothing quite like this angry, honest exposé. Its enemies used charges of anti-semitic defamation to ruin its release. This new Region B Blu-ray disc includes an excellent visual essay by Margaret Deriaz on Cold War politics and postward German cinema. From Radiance.
10/19/24