Razzia in St. Pauli

The wrongly forgotten Werner Hochbaum was one of the most original film-makers of pre-war Germany. He made this socially committed portrait of life in the St. Pauli harbour and prostitution district of Hamburg just before the Nazis came to power in 1933. Razzia in St. Pauli is now recognised by film historians as a film that was way ahead of neo-realism, but the `new’ (i.e. National-Socialist) censorship of his time regarded this honest social portrait as no more than an excuse to film in the bedroom of a Hafendirne. Against an authentic background, the film tells the love story of the prostitute Else and the fugitive sailor Karl. An ill-fated love. The police search in the whole district looking for the hopeless Karl and Else is driven back into the arms of her pimp. (GjZ)