Noticias

The elaborate heist that kicks into motion early into Dominik Graf’s The Cat effectively douses the steamy sex scene that opens the film with ice cold water. As the well-tanned, brawny Probek (Götz George) stands naked at the window of the low-lit hotel room in which he’s just gotten his rocks off, and from where he’ll orchestrate much of his exacting plan, one can’t help but think of the antiheroes in Michael Mann’s crime films. That’s especially true once Probek dons a shirt and tie and meticulously puts together his assault rifle and sets up his telescope to check out the bank on the other side of the courtyard.

Indeed, Probek is the very image of the sharply dressed, highly professional criminal. And he takes on his duties in a god-like fashion as he serves as the unseen puppet master from above, secretly pulling...

One of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, it's already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller's Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).

Graf's work includes pieces from the seventies to the present day. By working in TV he has been able to work regularly, something denied most feature directors, and seems to thrive on the tight schedules and budgets. Nightwatch, a 1993 episode of the long-running series "Der Fahnder", comes on like Fleischer's The Narrow Margin, with a cop guarding a gangster's moll who doesn't...