Short Takes: Polizebericht Überfall (1928): the overlooked Ernö Metzner
Film history is laden with figures who left their mark and of whom we know relatively little. Ernö Metzner we know a bit more of through his association with Pabst, Lang, Lubitsch, and others, as an outstanding art director. However, he also directed a number of films, one of which is a bonafide masterpiece.
In Polizeibericht Überfall/Police Report: Assault, sometimes called The Accident, we have a work that presages both the gritty, hard realism of Lang’s M, along with the visual experimentation of, say, Hans Richter. Referred to as the “inaugural example of Strassefilm”, a genre popular in the Weimar period, it’s stunning for it’s gallows humor, violence, and pure cinematic narrative.
There are no intertitles, for one thing, and the story that unfolds has the punch of a sick joke while also reminding the viewer, uncomfortably, of how quickly fortunes turn. Briefly, the fortunes that turn on finding a counterfeit Reich mark are two. The first man picks the coin up in the street and is quickly run over. We follow the coin’s journey until it quits spinning and comes to rest so that another man, played by character actor Heinrich Gotho, pick it up and in short order, cleans up at a poker game he joined.
Unfortunately for him, a rather large fellow, perhaps the manager of the establishment, perhaps an undercover cop, figures out Gotho’s character’s scam and proceeds to follow him. We see the burly guy pull a sap out of his back pocket (actually, it’s more like a very thick wood or perhaps metal rod) and pursue the little rogue down the street.
Our protagonist bumps into a prostitute played by Sybille Schmitz in her debut role. She welcomes into her place, where it appears our little guy isn’t at all safe. Nope. She’s got a man, her pimp, maybe, but more like an accomplice, and they’re just lying in wait for a sucker like this to show. Once our little nebbish decides he’s in danger and tries to leave, he retreats when he sees Mr. Burly Guy is still waiting for him. Eventually, he’s worked over by the guy in cahoots with the Schmitz’s hooker and once he’s cast out in the street, is brutally assaulted by the big man.
In a particularly queasy sequence, we see Gotho’s face split in two anamorphically, as well as other effects, until he comes to in a hospital bed where he’s bandaged up like a mummy, sweating feverishly, with eyes barely open. He’s being interrogated by the police; are you well enough to identify the assailants we have in custody? So reads the closing title.
The film was actually banned when it came out for being “brutalizing and demoralizing.” It’s left open-ended if there’s any retribution for anyone. The brutalization is in context in the film, but the “demoralizing” stems from the high inflation and depressed economy of the Weimar Republic going into the 30s.
Aside from the film being worthwhile in its own right, it brings not only Metzner out from history’s veil, but his wife, Grace Chiang, who co-wrote the screenplay. Chiang (Gracia Veronika Herzog) was born at sea in 1906 to a Hungarian father and a Chinese national mother. She might have been mistaken for Anna May Wong by the French reviewer of Rivalen im Weltrekord (Rivals in Worldrecord or better, Worldrecord Rivals) which was translated into French as Sabotage(1), a feature Metzner directed. She and Metzner met in 1928 in Hungary where he was born and where she grew up. She outlived her husband considerably, passing away at 105, in 2012.
They fled Germany in 1933 and Grace left acting behind in 1932, but is seen with a writer’s credit for Überfall, in a 1970 German series Zur Nacht/At Night. Metzner went back to art direction in the UK and later, they moved to Hollywood, where he worked until his last credit on The Macomber Affair (1947). Metzner died in 1953 and Grace transitioned to aerospace illustration for 25 years. (2)
Metzner deserves much more recognition for his place in developing the look and the feel of some of the most remarkable films in early Germany cinematic history. There’s just not enough information about why he didn’t pursue directing more and Grace remains a mystery, as well. The one early picture of her that I’ve been able to find does resemble Anna May Wong somewhat. There’s a delightful print interview with her and four other centenarians in a retirement community from 2006 where she doesn’t even mention her movie past. (3)
There is, however, one definite Anna May Wong connection: Ernö Metzner was the art director on Chu Chin Chow (1934), directed by Walter Frode and starring Anna May Wong, one of her last features filmed in England.
Polizeibericht Überfall may be seen on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ueberfall
Notes
1. Graham Russell Gao Hodges in his revised biography of Anna May Wong states that she had a small role as a mechanic. The review in a French paper accords her a much a larger role and while I don’t dispute Gao Hodges’ identifying Wong in a bit role, I do sense that the French review misidentified Wong for Chiang, who had a much larger role. I’ll let this stand for now, until I can actually see the film itself. Anna May Wong doesn’t show up in any of the cast lists I can find in German or in English. I have to also question how she would have found herself cast in an uncredited role in 1929, when she was a big enough name to capitalize on.
2. Their marriage is an example of how other nations didn’t enact legislation like the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States. There were no miscegenation laws, perhaps, in Hungary where both Metzner and Chiang were either born or naturalized citizens. One wonders how they fared upon arrival in the late 1930s in the U.S.
3. Douglas, 2006.
Sources
In addition to IMDb for Metzner, Chiang, Überfall, I consulted the following:
Rivalen im Weltrekord aka Achtung! Liebe! Lebensgefahr!
https://www.filmportal.de/film/achtung-liebe-lebensgefahr_789f1844f1b54ab49da3fe461957a187
Bio
https://www.filmportal.de/person/ernoe-metzner_e93e48671e73437cb56efc03a5501260
Überfall
https://www.filmportal.de/film/polizeibericht-ueberfall_ea32eb4930d94b6c90d6b4350e07ac22
Grace Chiang
https://www.ask-oracle.com/birth-chart/grace-chiang/
https://trakt.tv/people/grace-chiang?sort=released,asc
Additional
Douglas, Jeff. Centenarians say secret to aging well is hard work, healthy eating. The Associated Press, published in The Ocala Star Banner. August 18, 2006.
https://www.ocala.com/story/news/2006/08/18/centenarians-say-secret-to-aging-well-is-hard-work-healthy-eating/31167554007/Hodges, Graham Russell Gao. Anna May Wong - From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend. 3rd edition. Chicago Review Press Incorporated. Chicago, IL. 2023.
Murray, Bruce Arthur. Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic: From Caligari to Kuhle Wampe. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1990.
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