Summary
In the soot-choked back-alleys of Weimar Berlin, where gas-lamps flicker like dying stars, a feral waif known only as Die Ratte—Lina Paulsen’s vertebrae sharp as pen-nibs—scuttles across rain-slick cobbles, her pupils twin shutter-clicks recording every clandestine transaction. She traffics in pilfered secrets, bartering whispers of police raids for crusts of bread, until one midnight she witnesses Leo Burg’s bourgeois chemist—an absinthe-addled Faust in spats—dispatch his benefactor with a crystal stopper. The murder is soundless: a violet froth, a slump, a hat that rolls like a coin spun by fate. Rather than flee, Die Ratte gnaws the evidence, tucking the poisoned vial into the lining of her threadbare coat, thus sealing a blood-pact with the city’s phantom underbelly. From here the narrative splinters into a kaleidoscope of pursuit: Hermann Picha’s elephantine pawnbroker pursues her through fog-draped arcades, nostrils flared for the scent of mercury; Olga Engl’s brothel madame stages a marionette opera in which Die Ratte is both heroine and scapegoat; Mechthildis Thein’s Salvation Army lamplighter sings hymns that echo like bruises. Cinematographer Stefan Vacano tilts the camera into expressionist diagonals—rooftops impale the sky, bridges arc like broken spines—while Richard Hutter’s script leaks symbolism: every rat that scurries across frame is a living question-mark asking who, in this metropolis, is vermin and who exterminator. The climax unfurls inside an abandoned aquarium where moonlight drips through cracked glass, turning puddles into silver traps. Die Ratte confronts the chemist; their silhouettes mingle with skeletal fish, a danse macabre choreographed by guilt. When the police burst in, she bites the chemist’s hand, forcing the tainted vial between his lips—justice administered by a child whom society never fed. Yet the final shot withholds catharsis: Paulsen’s face, half-lit, half-shadowed, stares at the camera, her twitching grin implying that the next crime is already hatching behind those lamp-bright eyes.
Review Excerpt
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Berlin, 1923. Inflation gallops faster than gossip, and every alley exhales the sour breath of coal smoke. Into this scarred city slinks Die Ratte, a film whose very title feels like a bite. No cozy morality tale here—only the scrape of claws across conscience, the rustle of secrets traded for scraps. Director Harry Piel, better known then for stunt-laden pulp, surprises with something leaner, meaner, nearly feral.
From the first frame—an iris shot that opens like a bloodshot eye—we are shack..."
