Nasser Asphalt

An amazing indictment of falsifying news stories and twisting the truth. Eeerily foreshadowing the 2003 New York Times scandal focusing on Jayson Blair who was fired after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of his stories. The film dialogues contain a lot of humor and fast paced, generally good to follow. Gert Fröbe and an excellent Marti Held create relatively multidimensional characters, in addition to Horst Buchholz's main character. Even though the latest dubbed version is (obvioulsy) in English, the subtitles contain one important recurring error: The town they talk about is Gdingen, a former German town in 1958 Poland. The subtitles, however, keep referring to Goettingen, which is confusing at best, but in the plot it is completely nonsensical. I would withdraw the DVD and redo the subtitles and replace them free of charge. Other than that the plot is nicely developed and another example of Frank Wisbar's talent. Wisbar had only come home from the US a few years earlier and would one year later make "Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen" in which he described the plight of refugees from former Polish territories from where he was from as well.

I was watching a very expensive Hollywood film with lots of excellent special effects but I got bored and looked for something else and I came upon this little gem. The movie that I was watching had such a convoluted and needlessly complex storyline that I knew there was no way that all of it could be recapitulated in a satisfactory manner.

"Wet Asphalt" has a very well defined story about irresponsible journalists that was easy to follow for one but also seemed completely relevant when applied to today's world when there is so much questionable journalism on network TV, cable TV and social media. For many years I have said that while Stars and performances are very important the script is really everything.

The lore of Hollywood tells us that once upon a time the head of production at MGM, Irving Thalberg, had said "if the audience sees a movie that is great for the last 10 minutes they will go away feeling that they saw a great movie". I wish that today screen writers would think about this before they indulge themselves in overly complicated plot lines that leave you with multiple unanswered questions.

In Berlin, when the journalist Greg Bachmann (Horst Buchholz) is released from prison six months before the end of his sentence, there is a driver named Jupp (Gert Fröbe) waiting for him. Soon he learns that the famous journalist Cesar Boyd (Martin Held) was the responsible for the shorter sentence. Cesar offers a position of his assistant to Greg; in return, Boyd would write his story about his interviews to war criminals and Greg would help him in other matters. Meanwhile Boyd welcomes the daughter of a deceased friend, Bettina (Maria Perschy), and he becomes her guardian. Greg and Bettina feels immediately attracted by each other but Boyd is also interested in Bettina. When Boyd needs to send an article to a newspaper in Paris, he fabricates a story of a group of five German soldiers that have lived in a bunker in Poland for six years. In the end, one blind soldier would have survived and was sent to a Polish hospital. The story becomes a great sensation, affecting the governments of Poland, Russia and Germany and their inhabitants. When Greg discovers the big lie of his boss and mentor, he has to take an attitude; but Boyd is an old fox.

"Nasser Asphalt", a.k.a. "Wet Asphalt", is a dramatic thriller based on a true story that shows the effect of a swindle in the press. The character Greg Bachmann is too brave and does not accept to sell his soul to the powerful Cesar Boyd and prefers to expose his former boss to the press, in a rare example of integrity and ethic. Unfortunately the DVD released in Brazil is dubbed in English. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Asfalto Molhado" ("Wet Asphalt")

West German newspaper classic with Horst Buchholz and Maria Perschy

Good and balanced research is very important, otherwise it can quickly become a newspaper duck. This is what happened in 1951, when the alleged bunker people of Gdingen (formerly Gotenhafen) were blown up into a worldwide newspaper sensation. Screenwriter Will Tremper used this material to write an exciting and entertaining script, which was filmed by successful director Frank Wisbar in Berlin and in the Hamburg studio (Wandsbek).

The dashing Greg Bachmann (Horst Buchholz) is a raging reporter to the book. He secretly breaks into the war crimes prison in Spandau to conduct an exclusive interview with the evil Nazi henchmen who are incarcerated there. Through this hussar piece, Cesar Boyd (Martin Held), a world-famous Edelfeder, becomes aware of the smart youngster and quickly makes him his assistant. Greg can hardly believe his luck, especially since he also meets the lovely Bettina (still brunette and a bit pale: Maria Perschy) in the Boyd house, who the great Cesar has already cast a possessive eye on. Things come to a head when Boyd uses a robber's gun from his chauffeur Jupp (Gert Fröbe) to jazz up the alleged bunker people from Gdynia to become a global sensation. Soon the cheerful Greg comes under suspicion of being responsible for this colossal newspaper duck.

In smaller roles there is a reunion with such popular West German stars as Inge Meysel, Heinz Reincke and Peter Capell, who plays an American journalist.

Exciting and enjoyable reckoning with sensational journalism, which thrives above all on the excellent interaction between the brilliant Martin Held and the attractive young star Horst Buchholz, who is warming up for his later world career here.

The InterWest film production, which was brought to cinemas by Europa Filmverleih at the time, was able to sell 2.144 million (source: InsideKino) tickets in the box office. Not bad for a topic that is more remote from the public! Such films also found an audience in Adenauerland.

Highly recommended for fans of old black and white films from the Federal Republic film industry!

I have always eschewed dubbed movies. This may be the first one I've ever seen. The dubbed dialog includes a lot of forced sounding laughter and is highly reminiscent of inaccurate subtitles. Probably when the Unites States exports action movies that make hundreds of millions of dollars abroad, the dubbing is slicker.

The plot involves a young man token out of prison to assist a well known journalist. The young man is played by Horst Buchholz, surely one of the handsomest men ever to work in major movies. The journalist and his young female ward are unknown to me and it's difficulty to comment on their acting under these circumstances.

I have the feeling, which could be wrong, that the Buchholz character is meant to be a little like the Terrence Stamp character in Pasolini's "Teorema" -- that he is attractive to all who encounter him.

In any case, it's interesting to me that this movie was released a few years before "One, Two, Three." That is probably the movie for which most Americans know Buchholz. The plot is similar to that of Wilder's earlier "Ace in the Hole," in that it involves cynical, exploitative journalists.

I am not a fan of One, Two, Three," though I like almost everything else Wilder did in this country enormously. This project, with the same young male lead, might have been a more interesting undertaking for the man who made not only "Ace in the Hole" but also "A Foreign Affair."