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| Images courtesy of Radiance Films |
Radiance Films continue to posit themselves at the forefront
of the boutique releasing labels frontline, showing up renowned labels like
Arrow Video or Criterion with their deluxe ornate packages of select titles
curated and released by the label and their OBI spine packages. With regard to World Cinema, they’ve been
doling out World Blu-Ray Premieres of numerous titles previously unavailable
with English subtitles. Their latest
venture comes in the form of Munich, Bavaria based German director Dominik Graf’s
1988 heist epic The Cat in a new digital transfer supervised and
approved by the director alongside plentiful extras including interviews and
commentary with Graf’s generous participation.
The film in question concerns a botched bank robbery Dog Day
Afternoon style whose every move is being anticipated and maneuvered by an
assassin and criminal mastermind named Probek (Götz George) operating on the
outside under the police force’s noses.
Based on Uwe Erichsen’s novel and co-written for the screen
by Christoph Fromm, The Cat opens on a seemingly by the numbers bank
robbery being conducted by two fools who hold the clerks hostage demanding
three million German marks for ransom.
As the police force starts to close in, sidestepping their actions is
Probek who is having an affair with Jutta Ehser (Gudrun Landgrebe) behind her
bank manager husband’s back and does all he can to keep tabs on the robbery and
foil any attempts to ensnare him or the two burglars in tow. In a standout sequence that will be studied
for years to come, Probek in a fit of desperation trying to narrowly evade cops
who have besieged the area crawls underneath several moving motor vehicles
before sabotaging one of them to start a chain reaction of car explosions. It is a harrowing, claustrophobic moment that
sets the tone for just how quick and slick Probek is in singlehandedly evading
his adversaries.
From Paris, Texas cinematographer Martin Schäfer’s slick cinematography of brutalist architecture, glass windows and parking lots to Lady Cop composer Andreas Köbner’s electrifying score, The Cat is a thoroughly stylized and mannered heist epic whose thrills become less dependent on whether or not the robbery succeeds than it does on watching Probek snake his way out of another obstacle. Beginning to end, the film finds itself posited between the aforementioned Dog Day Afternoon and Radiance Films’ own release of Damiano Damiani’s Goodbye & Amen as a labyrinthine heist thriller where the criminal almost always has the upper hand. Of course the film largely rests on the shoulders of Götz George who makes the German criminal mastermind into a fast thinking quick witted survivor. The ensemble cast is overall good with Gudrun Landgrebe turning over a sultry seductress who is playing both sides of the criminal fence though through and through this is Götz George’s movie.
Winner of the Best Director German Film Award of 1988 and spoken of the same breath as Jean-Pierre Melville and/or Michael Mann in terms of dramatizing elegantly constructed and executed heist epics, The Cat comes to Radiance Films housed with a newly filmed interview with Dominik Graf, new interview with screenwriter Christoph Fromm and producer Georg Fell as well as a select-scene commentary from the director. Also included in the package is original essay writing by Brandon Streussnig who at one point wrote for the Movie Sleuth blog. And as always Radiance Films have housed the set in an amaray case with reversible art and an OBI spine. Another stellar release from honestly one of my top three boutique labels working today, The Cat is an underrated yet-to-be-rediscovered heist thriller gem and a stellar example of the German New Wave crime subgenre.
--Andrew Kotwicki