Der Unfall

When Paco arrives in Cologne to visit his brother Abél, who hires himself out as a factory worker, nobody welcomes him at the train station. Without any knowledge of German, but with an open, friendly manner, Paco makes his way to the factory where Abél, to his knowledge, works. What he doesn’t know is that his brother was the victim of a racist attack and was found severely injured with a fractured skull in a construction pit. Unsuspectingly, Paco takes up Abél’s work and finds support from his new colleagues. But soon Paco learns of his brother’s fate. “Accident”, as the title announces, or “crime”? Paco begins his own investigations.

With the film Der Unfall (The Accident), which is a crime thriller, Peter Beauvais simultaneously succeeds in making a revealing social study of German society in the 1960s. The top view of the scene of the crime, the pit with the lifeless body, which opens the film, reveals the disparaging gaze of the curious passers-by, who see the incident as confirmation of their suspicion that “since they are here, it [here] has become the purest criminal district”. Even Paco, the brother, does not escape this prejudgement: when trying to buy a ticket on the bus, his Spanish peseta is brusquely dismissed as a “lira” and while the other passengers look angry, an amused-looking woman takes care of him and buys him a ticket. Beauvais’ film oscillates between humorous lightness and distressing heaviness.