The Deathmaker

1924, Hanover. Fritz Haarmann has been arrested; he is held to have killed at least twenty-seven young men. The court wants his mental state established and appoints a professor of psychiatry. The film takes place almost entirely inside those sessions: one room, one table, two men and a stenographer. Haarmann talks; the professor asks. The camera never goes outside, no killing is shown, nothing is reconstructed. The weight of what is being described comes only from the voice of the man sitting in the room. Romuald Karmakar directs the German film; a hundred and ten minutes, with Götz George as Haarmann and Jürgen Hentsch as the professor. The text is based on the actual examination transcripts. George was named best actor at Venice in 1995 for the part.