Epilogue

What really caused the yacht Orplid, sailing from Germany to Scotland, to sink, leaving a sole survivor?

Journalist Peter Zabel decides to investigate. Epilogue by German director Helmut Käutner is typical of genre cinema set in the European underworld of the period immediately following WWII. In fact, its main inspiration is Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1948), which revolves around various large and small-scale illicit activities that were rampant across the globe at that time. Directed in 1949, this one-of-a-kind film noir features a host of visual innovations, such as introducing its protagonist-narrator after a good ten minutes or using the claustrophobic confines of a paternoster elevator, in continuous motion, to set the stage for an action scene. But above all, Epilogue is a character study of men and women trapped in a single place, a ship, from which they cannot escape and where they must come face to face with who they truly are. In this grand game of deception, the film, a tale of pursuit, serves as a metaphor for the European continent, and especially for a defeated Germany, completely lost and in a sorry state, and therefore dangerous like anything wounded. The fighting continues quietly, in the shadows, amid deep turmoil.