One or the Other of Us

Wolfgang Petersen's first cinema feature, and its subject remains oddly current: academic fraud. A penniless student, Bernd Ziegenhals, discovers by chance that the rising professor Kolczyk lifted his doctoral thesis from an obscure American scientist, and starts blackmailing him. Kolczyk pays at first. When the student begins circling his daughter, he fights back, and the two men settle into a relationship of mutual destruction. The casting looks striking in hindsight. Klaus Schwarzkopf plays the professor and Jürgen Prochnow the student; seven years later Prochnow would be Petersen's submarine captain in Das Boot. Elke Sommer and Ulla Jacobsson complete the cast. The film won a Filmband in Gold at the 1974 German film awards. Petersen had come out of television, and this tight two-hander plays like a rehearsal for the confined-space thrillers he would later be known for. Who it is for: viewers curious about 1970s German cinema who enjoy watching two men slowly corner each other. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. This moves by conversation rather than action, by implication rather than threat.