From 1930s serial killers to Cold War conspiracy theorists; from botched bank robberies to murder most foul, DW's cinema team picks their favorite German thrillers of all time.
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German thriller movies - our 10 favorites
We've chosen our favorite 10 German thriller movies of all times. Some you would expect, others will come as a surprise.
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#10 'One Or the Other of Us'
"Einer von uns Beiden" is the 1974 film debut of German director Wolfgang Petersen, who was famous many years later in Hollywood. This psychological thriller focuses on the conflict between a sociology professor and a failed student. The film was an exception among German arthouse films back then, a thriller genre for the big screen.
Image: picture-alliance/KPA
# 9: 'It Happened in Broad Daylight'
A highly suspenseful thriller with a screenplay co-written by Swiss novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, "Es geschah am hellichtenTag" is a 1958 German-Swiss-Spanish co-production. Director Ladislao Vajda opted for brilliant black and white shots to highlight a hunt for the man who killed a little girl.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
# 8: '23 - Nothing is What It Seems'
The pictured scene is misleading: there is rarely reason for laughter in "23 - Nichts ist so wie es scheint." Hans-Christian Schmid's 1998 film is a complex thriller with surprising twists and turns about computer crimes, hackers and conspiracy theories.
Image: C+P Film/Kerstin Stelter
# 7: 'Antibodies'
The 2005 Hollywood-style crime thriller revolves around the confrontation between a police inspector and a serial killer, pictured. Apparently doing a convincing job with "Antikörper," director Christian Alvert filmed his following movie in Hollywood.
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# 6: 'Downwards'
Swiss director Carl Schenkel also used a movie produced in Germany as a springboard to Hollywood. The 1984 thriller "Abwärts" is about three men and a woman who get stuck in an elevator in an office building. Set in a very confined space, the movie is suspense-packed to the end.
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# 5: 'The Silence'
Another Swiss director, Barab Bo Odar, released a superb thriller in Germany in 2010. Like many genre films, "Das letzte Schweigen" is about the murder of a child and the desperate search for the killer. In stark contrast to the bleak story are the visuals of the film, shot in the summertime countryside of Bavaria and Thuringia.
Image: Jan Rasmus Voss / NFP*
# 4: 'The Experiment'
Basing his 2001 film "Das Experiment" on the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel filmed the story of an unusual social experiment involving 20 men hired to play prisoners and guards in a prison, monitored by scientists for their reactions. The situation gets out of hand, and the viewer is enthralled.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives/IFTN
# 3: 'M - A City Looks for a Murderer'
One of the most influential German films ever, Fritz Lang's 1931 thriller effectively used the potential of the new medium, the 'talkie,' or sound film. Peter Lorre is terrific in the role of a childish, needy child murderer. "M" isn't just about the usual cat-and-mouse game to catch the killer, but also skirts issues like mass hysteria.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives/IFTN
# 2: 'Tattoo'
A hard-boiled thriller, a veritable shocker. In "Tattoo," two inspectors hunt a serial killer specializing in victims with big tattoos. Director Robert Schwentke makes no compromises, and his imagery is drastic for a German film. It was Schwentke's ticket to Hollywood.
Image: Imago/United Archives
# 1: 'The Cat'
Our number one choice, this 1988 film isn't a psychological thriller but a classic crime film. Director Dominik Graf turned the story of a bank robbery and hostage-taking into a gripping thriller with surprise twists and turns. The bare-bones genre thriller "Die Katze" did well at the German box offices, too - highly unusual at the time.
Image: picture alliance/United Archives/IFTN
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Crime, violence and fear, not to mention suspense, are at the core of any good thriller. But the best of the genre go deeper, revealing something rotten in society at large.
That's the case with our top 10 list: these are edge-of-your-seat dramas that reflect the ugliest aspects of German history.
A child-killing murderer in 1930s Berlin stands in for the massacre of innocents to come under the Nazi regime. A 1980s computer hacker is overwhelmed by the Cold War paranoia infecting the divided nation. The beast hiding beneath the civilized surface of modern-day Germany is unleashed by a psychological experiment gone wrong.
The plots are familiar: there's the bank heist gone bad, the brilliant serial killer taunting the police; the blackmailer whose victim turns the table. But working within those genre conventions has freed the directors on our list to experiment with visual style, editing and sound design. The full emotional toolbox of modern cinema is on brilliant display.
As is the acting of our films' leads. The cast on our list reads like a "Who's Who" of great German talent of the past 70 years: Peter Lorre, Götz George, Gert Fröbe, André Hennicke, Wotan Wilke Möhring: men who are at their best playing bad.
It's a male-heavy genre but there are a few standout performances from actresses on our list of thrillers, including Gudrun Landgrebe, Katrin Sass and Renée Soutendijk.
So take a look and tell us what you think. Did your favorites make the cut? Were there any thrillers we unfairly snubbed? Let us know by writing at kino@dw.com.
And if you're an adrenaline junkie, check out the films themselves. Be ready for a rush. Just don't expect many happy endings.
