Rent Black Gravel (1961)
3.8 of 5 from 48 ratings
1h 53min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Sohnen is a town built on vice for the occupying American forces in post-war Germany. Robert (Helmut Wildt), a local truck driver who sells off gravel from the site he works on as a side hustle, runs into an old flame, Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), who is now respectably married to American officer John (Hans Cossy). When the pair are driving in Robert's truck, tragedy strikes and they find themselves covering up a terrible secret...From Helmut Kautner, 'Black Gravel' was reviled on its release in Germany for its frank depiction of anti-semitism and savage depiction of a country on its knees after the war.
- Actors:
- Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur, Peter Nestler, Edeltraut Elsner, Else Knott, Guy Gehrke, Ilse Pagé, O.A. Buck, Karl Luley, Max Buchsbaum, Gisela Fischer, Ursula Gütschow, Erich Buschardt, Xeno Strauss, Peter Thomas, Georg Lobewein
- Directors:
- Helmut Käutner
- Producers:
- Walter Ulbrich
- Writers:
- Helmut Käutner, Walter Ulbrich
- Aka:
- Schwarzer Kies / Haut für Haut / Kies
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Countries:
- Germany
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 23/06/2025
- Run Time:
- 114 minutes
- Languages:
- German LPCM Mono
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.66:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- (0) All
- Bonus:
- Includes both the uncensored original cut (114 mins) and the re-edited distribution cut (113 mins), featuring alternate ending
- Audio commentary with film historian Olaf Moller (2020)
- New interview with writer and programmer Margaret Deriaz (2024, 19 mins)
- Newsreel footage from the film set featuring behind-the-scenes images and an interview with Kautner (1960, 4 mins)
- Trailer
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Reviews (1) of Black Gravel
Tip-offs and Tip-up Trucks - Black Gravel review by CH
What with, among others, They Drive by Night (in its English and American versions), Hell Drivers and Thieves' Highway, trucks - their loads and those at the wheel - have long been the stuff of chicanery upon the screen. Lesser known is this late-Fifties German take on noir. Light and shade are a veritable emblem of a post-war country where a village is swamped by an occupying air force which, from its new base, tests jet planes across these skies.
At ground level there is illicit dealing in the eponymous gravel, beneath which are soon buried a couple killed by a wayward truck. Add to this the rekindling of passion between a driver and a woman who has married one of the American servicemen, not to mention many a scene set in a bar and adjacent brothel, and here, with everybody on the make, is as something explosive as opening which leads to a crucial quest for a missing dog.
How it turns out is told so well, the plot to moving from scene to scene with a logic which defies its outlandish set-up.
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