Die Parallelstrasse / The Parallel Street - by Ferdinand Khittl (1962)

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The film stays with a group of five men sat in a room at night in lamp-lit darkness puzzling over a series of documents and images. Their task is to understand the documents, understand their unifying theme, understand who prepared the documents. Erasure awaits them should they fail this task; they have three nights to complete it. A weary yet sympathetic clerk watches over them, supplying them with supplementary information and advice where required. The film documents are often extravagantly beautiful and set in exotic locations. The text is sensual and can transport one, for example referring to the fragrance of rice ballooning out of a vessel once the cover is lifted, mentioned whilst such a transaction is occurring on a river in the Tropics; or to how the Devil's Island guillotine slices the air.

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Die Parallelstraße is one of the most mysterious pioneer films of the New German Cinema. It was produced by GBF, a production company for innovative industrial and promotional films and received awards in inter national film festivals. French critic Robert Benayoun called it "a philosophical thriller, a western of meditation which compensates for a whole year of inevitable manifestations of stupidity," Jacques Rivette put it on his list of the most important films of 1968. The DVD presents for the very first time this "unjustly forgotten masterpiece of the New German Cinema" (Martin Brady) as well as several rare shorts by Ferdinand Khittl (1924-1976) which show his talent for innovative film experiments.

IMDB info
Stars: Friedrich Joloff, Ernst Marbeck and Wilfried Schröpfer
Production land: West Germany
Run time: ~83 min