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6.8/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.8/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Das Geheimnis der roten Katze remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly, only if you’re into the kind of early German talkies that feel like they were held together with glue and sheer willpower. If you like your movies polished and logical, stay far away. If you want to see actors from the Weimar era acting like their lives depend on a stuffed animal, pull up a chair. 🐈
Hans Junkermann is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Sometimes he looks like he’s actually solving a case, other times he looks like he just remembered he left the stove on back in 1929. It is that kind of performance.
The pacing is all over the place. One minute we’re in a tense standoff, and the next, characters are running through hallways for no apparent reason. It’s got that specific energy you find in movies like The Cat and the Fiddle—where everything feels like a stage play that someone forgot to clear the set for.
There is a moment near the middle where a character trips over their own feet. They left it in the final cut. I love that. It makes the whole mystery feel so much more human than the cold, calculated stuff we get from big studios today.
It’s not as heavy or philosophical as The Natural Law. It’s just noise and shadows. And honestly? I enjoyed the noise. It feels like a scrap of history that was never meant to be analyzed by someone with a laptop in their living room.
Some of the dialogue is so fast it sounds like they’re trying to finish the movie before the film reel runs out. It’s not smooth. It’s not elegant. It’s just there, existing in this weird little bubble of history.
Don’t go in expecting a masterpiece. Go in expecting to watch people in fancy suits lose their minds over a feline. It’s a strange, dusty, and completely imperfect experience. 📽️