It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958)

Perfect cast and a good story

Absolutely the worst movie.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It seems this is not a place to watch movies. No use to me.

I became curious about this one after realizing that this was a film based on the same source material as a later adaptation directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson, Robin Wright, Benicio del Toro and Aaron Eckhart.Penn's version is a very bleak, disturbing film with Jack Nicholson actually disappearing into the role of the main detective character, something he so rarely does these days. The unrelenting gloom of the film was probably what made it less palpable for audiences at the time of its release. I have to wonder if that atmosphere of despair was taken from the book, or simply inserted by Penn in his adaptation of the screenplay.This version from the late 50's is nonetheless a very effective thriller in its own way, with great performances and very well directed. Gert Frobe (Goldfinger) gives a very chilling portrait of the killer, while Heinz Ruhmann as Detective Matthai is excellent too, and carries the film well.It's simply one of those solid and well-done black and white thrillers from an earlier era that slips under the wire, and that should be rediscovered again by contemporary audiences. Criterion! Check this one out!

"It happened on broad daylight" (1958) was the first Swiss series-killer movie. In the Canton of Zurich, little blond girls are killed. The villagers suspect the peddler Jacquier (Michel Simon) who is arrested by the police and hangs himself up in his cell. Chief-commissioner Matthaei (Heinz Rühmann) is convinced that the peddler was innocent. In the drawings of Gritli, the last killed little girl, he finds little hedgehogs, a puppet, a black car and a strange animal with horns. He recognizes that all murder cases happened along the street that leads to the Canton of Grisons. From an Italian, he rents a gas station along this street and engages as his housekeeper a women whose little daughter Annemarie strongly resembles the murdered Gritli. One evening, Annemarie is late back home and tells that she met a huge "sorcerer" who gave her chocolates that resemble hedgehogs. On his car there is a number tag with the ibex, the heraldic figure of the Grisons. The film shows parallel the rich Mr. Schrott alias the "sorcerer" (Gert Fröbe) suppressed by his wife (Berta Drews). Matthaei asks Annemarie when she will meet the "sorcerer" again and goes instead of her in the forest. At the meeting-place he lays down a blond-haired puppet. While Matthaei hides himself, the "sorcerer" appears and thinks that Annemarie was killed. He cries out in his insanity and sees Matthaei, assuming that he is the murderer and tries to kill him. But Matthaei's police men are already ready to protect their boss and arrest the "sorcerer".

Once I met an arabian, and while talking about cinema, he said, for knowing this movie he would forget five of his lovely movies, after watching it ! G. Fröbe and H. Rühmann are playing such fabulous, that you think somebody inconvenient is entering your near forest. Everybody I know is worn down after this Horror-criminal, where NO violence or anything bizarre is shown! Turn off the lights.One of the best movies of the 1950ies.