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SYNOPSIS
Films Include : The Murderers Are Among Us • Somewhere in Berlin • Police Raid • Marriage in the Shadows • The Blum Affair

The first film studio to begin operating in post-war Germany, DEFA was officially authorised to begin making films in the Soviet occupation zone in 1946. Overseen by the Soviet Military Administration, one of its primary mandates was to aid in the denazification of Germany by focusing on anti-fascist themes in films that would ruminate on the literal and figurative wreckage left behind by the Third Reich. Often shot on location in the ruins of Berlin, these early DEFA productions have come to be called Trümmerfilme or “rubble films,” and remain some of the most important pictures the studio ever made.

The first film produced in post-war Germany, The Murderers Are Among Us sees a concentration camp survivor return home to Berlin only to find a stranger living in her apartment: an ex-soldier who harbours a terrible secret. Somewhere in Berlin follows a group of children who spend their days playing in bombed-out buildings and a returning prisoner-of-war seeking a new sense of purpose. In Police Raid, a determined detective leads a crackdown on black marketeers who aim to exploit the chaos of the post-war period to their own advantage. Set during the Nazi era, Marriage in the Shadows charts the tragic life of an actor and his Jewish wife as they attempt to survive the Third Reich. Finally, The Blum Affair recounts the true case of a Jewish industrialist who was tried for murder in the 1920s.

Encompassing a range of genres – including the thriller, the police procedural and the courtroom drama – and ranging in visual style from expressionism to stark realism, DEFA’s rubble films are bound together by a concern with the physical and psychological damage wrought by Nazism, World War II and the Holocaust. The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present all five films for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK, accompanied by a wealth of new and archival extras.

SPECIAL FEATURES
Limited Collector's Edition Box Set [2000 copies]
Limited edition hardcase featuring new art by Carly A-F [2000 copies]
Limited edition collector’s book featuring new writing on the films in this set by German film historians Tim Bergfelder, Daniel Jonah Wolpert, Brad Prager and Mariana Ivanova [2000 copies]
Reversible inner sleeve artwork featuring new designs for each film by Scott Saslow
All five films presented in 1080p HD from 2K scans of the original 35mm camera negatives by the DEFA Foundation
New commentary on The Murderers Are Among Us by crime cinema expert Sergio Angelini
New commentary on Somewhere in Berlin by East German cinema scholar Elizabeth Ward
New commentary on Police Raid by crime cinema expert Sergio Angelini
New commentary on Marriage in the Shadows by DEFA historian Seán Allan
ew commentary on The Blum Affair written by Rolland Man and presented by David Melville Wingrove
From the Rubble – new interview with socialist cinema expert Claire Knight on the founding of DEFA and its early productions
Confronting the Past – new interview with Jewish studies scholar Sue Vice on Marriage in the Shadows and The Blum Affair
Crimewave – new video essay by DEFA historian Sebastian Heiduschke on DEFA’s crime cinema
Rebuilding Berlin (1946) – DEFA documentary on the post-war rebuilding of Berlin
Rebuilding Potsdam (1946) – DEFA documentary on the post-war rebuilding of Potsdam
Death Camp Sachsenhausen (1946) - DEFA documentary on the Holocaust and Sachsenhausen concentration camp
he Eyewitness 1946/01 – archival newsreel featuring DEFA’s first animation, Underground Scare
The Eyewitness 1946/08 – archival newsreel featuring a report on the premiere of The Murderers Are Among Us
The Eyewitness 1947/53 – archival newsreel featuring a report on the making of Marriage in the Shadows
*All extras subject to change*

Well that's an exciting proposition. I can't see any titles confirmed, but I can see that one of the directors is Wolfgang Staudte so I would be surprised if this isn't a long-overdue release of The Murderers Are Among Us (somewhat ironically just after it was released with English subtitles in Germany, but I thankfully hadn't got around to ordering it yet!)

nice. Can’t wait to see which films are in this. Murderers Are Among Us, obviously. And then?

Specs added to OP.

Glad I held off on upgrading Murderers just for the subtitles, I thought something might be in development. Day one for me.

I have a feeling that this will be an easy highlight of Eureka's slate of German titles.

Still need to watch my First Run anti-Nazi DVD sets, but it looks like Murderers is the only title carried over from those two sets?

domino harvey wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 4:03 pm Still need to watch my First Run anti-Nazi DVD sets, but it looks like Murderers is the only title carried over from those two sets?

That seems to be the case, I assume they're of different "genres" than what's being presented here. Hopefully we'll get future volumes - this post-Weimar kick that Eureka! has been on has been something of a dream come true, and there's more than a few other DEFA produced films out there that I'm dying to see in HD, and could likely be collected in a similar fashion to this set.

I worked my way through Konrad Wolf's entire output a few months ago, and he'd be an obvious choice for a survey - a major director by any yardstick, and a fascinating one, and presumably the rights situation is exactly the same as with the other DEFA titles.

(Please ignore the egregious mistake in my very first post - I made the mistake of trusting a book about Wolf over Wikipedia, which is normally sound advice but not in this case! He was actually born in 1925.)

domino harvey wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 4:03 pm Still need to watch my First Run anti-Nazi DVD sets, but it looks like Murderers is the only title carried over from those two sets?

It's the only film that would qualify as a 'rubble film', as the term applies only to German films made soon after WWII when Germany was still in ruins and bombed-out cities were often used as backdrops. All the other films are from the 1960s, when Germany had been rebuilt.

MichaelB wrote:I worked my way through Konrad Wolf's entire output a few months ago, and he'd be an obvious choice for a survey - a major director by any yardstick, and a fascinating one, and presumably the rights situation is exactly the same as with the other DEFA titles.

(Please ignore the egregious mistake in my very first post - I made the mistake of trusting a book about Wolf over Wikipedia, which is normally sound advice but not in this case! He was actually born in 1925.)

Agreed - the fact that this is his centenary and DEFA are doing something of a marketing push with new restorations at Berlin and Cannes makes me hopeful that Eureka might have something in the works. There's a comprehensive set coming out in Germany...on DVD only

Eureka's trailer for this set shows quite well the link between these films, namely the use of the worn-torn cities as a backdrop/set that creates a much more realistic view of Europe than a Hollywood studio backlot. Like Welles' The Trial, they added to the atmosphere for noirs, mysteries & dark dramas. In contrast to much of (earlier) Eastern German cinema which implicitly attempted to present an optimistic vision of the capacity of communism to better humanity (and hence tended to be more pedantic or propagandistic and tended to be duller), these rarer films borrowed from the Expressionistic style of early German film to highlight the darker side of humanity because they were usually commenting on the Nazi past or the evils of capitalism.

Konrad Wolf would be a top candidate for a director box.. Not sure offhand how many of Wolfgang Staudte's best films were with DEFA, as he was also able to direct in West Germany, but he is also a good candidate beyond just Murders Are Among Us.

There also were a few Hollywood movies shot on location in bombed out German cities soon after WWII, like Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair, Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express and George Seaton's The Big Lift.

I don't understand the comment about 'much of earlier Eastern German cinema', as most of these films were made in the mid-to-late 1940s, shortly after the Soviet occupation and before the establishment of the GDR.

Somewhere in Berlin is streaming (together with nine other films made or set in the post-war period) at the Deutsche Kinematek website. Unfortunately, the English subtitles seem to be completely out of sync.