The Last Witness

A factory director takes a call from his lover in Hamburg and learns that their four-month-old child has been killed. The police arrest the mother almost at once; he is married, wealthy and kept out of suspicion by his position. Her lawyer carries the case virtually alone, knowing he has to find the real killer or his client will be convicted. Wolfgang Staudte’s real subject is not the murder but the machinery of justice: the police want the file closed quickly, and the court takes it for granted that a woman who has had many lovers is capable of the crime. Staudte had left East Germany for the West in 1953, and the film goes directly at the prejudices of the system he moved into. Martin Held leads, with Hanns Lothar and Ellen Schwiers. It opened on 30 December 1960.