"Rotation" is a German movie from 1949 and that year Germany was separated into two countries, so this one is officially an East German production. The director is Wolfgang Staudte and he is also one of the writers. The other two are Austrian Erwin Klein and Staudte's father Fritz. As this movie will soon have its 70th anniversary, it is a black-and-white film of course (ignoring the color propaganda films from Nazi Germany) and it has sound which was really common already, even in the 1940s. The main character is played by Paul Esser, who was in his mid-30s when this film was made and he plays a man who is somehow stuck between his own ideology and the Nazis'. Occasionally he wants to join them and then he does not a couple moments later. Apart from Werner Peters, I cannot say that i am familiar with any of the supporting players in here. The most unusual thing about this film we have here is that it has actually a couple sequences that you could almost call "action sequences", especially for the standards back then. Anyway, I was neither too impressed with any of the performances (including Esser') nor with the plot and story in general. I have seen a few German films that deal with the subject of coming to terms what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, but those that were made directly after World War II I tend to find fairly ineffective, just like this one here. There was never really anything interesting about it that would get you to the edge of your seat and I was kinda glad this film stayed under the 80 minute mark even as it dragged quite a bit nonetheless. I give it a thumbs-down and I cannot agree with the awards recognition or the IMDb rating here. Watch something else instead.
Review of Rotation
