Town Without Pity [Stadt ohne Mitleid] **** (1961, Kirk Douglas, E G Marshall, Christine Kaufmann) – Classic Movie Review 6912

The 1961 drama Town Without Pity (German: Stadt ohne Mitleid) tells the story of the court case against four GIs – Sergeant Chuck Snyder (Frank Sutton), Corporal Birdwell Scott (Richard Jaeckel), Private Joey Haines (Mal Sondock), and Corporal Jim Larkin (Robert Blake) – charged with raping a German teenager, the 16-year-old Karin Steinhof (Christine Kaufmann), on a drunken spree in forest around the small town of Neustadt where they have been posted.

Kirk Douglas has a high old time as Major Steve Garrett, the defence lawyer who inquires into the girl’s purity in court. Speaking out against capital punishment while providing frank entertainment, Town Without Pity is a liberal-minded exploitation courtoom thriller with a social conscience, made in the wake of Anatomy of a Murder, with a shared interest in the lurid sexual details spicing up a downbeat tale.

Director Gottfried Reinhardt films in Germany with the hard fist of his expressionist style, which is off-putting, but there is more than enough interest kicked up in the acting of Douglas, Kaufmann and EG Marshall (as the prosecuting Colonel Jerome Pakenham, who seeks the death penalty) as well as the tense, twisty, ironic yarn to keep us watching attentively and engrossed.

The story is adapted by Jan Lustig from the 1960 novel Das Urteil (The Verdict) by German writer Gregor Dorfmeister, writing under the pen name Manfred Gregor, with a screenplay by Silvia Reinhardt and George Hurdalek. It was rewritten without credit by Dalton Trumbo, at Douglas’s suggestion.

Town Without Pity was released in the same year that John A Bennett, the last man executed by the US Army, was hanged for raping an 11-year-old girl.

It was shot in Bamberg and Forchheim in Bavaria, with some studio scenes in Vienna.

It has the benefit of a great melodramatic pop song, ‘Town Without Pity’, sung by Gene Pitney, written by composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington, and produced by Aaron Schroeder. In 1962 it received the Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture Song and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Pitney was touring the UK when his manager found him dead of a heart attack in his hotel room in Cardiff on 5 April 2006, aged 66. His ended his final show at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall with ‘Town Without Pity’ and a standing ovation.

Also in the cast are Barbara Rutting, Hans Nielson, Karin Hardt, Gerhart Lippert, Alan Gifford, Ingrid van Bergen, Eleanore van Hoogstraten, Max Haufler, Siegfried Schurenberg, Rose Renee Roth, Fred Durr, Robert Shankland and Joe Valerio.

Town Without Pity is directed by Gottfried Reinhardt, runs 105 minutes, is a Mirisch, Gloria-Film and Osweg production, is released by United Artists, is written by Silvia Reinhardt and George Hurdalek, is shot in black and white by Kurt Hasse, is produced by Gottfried Reinhardt, is scored by Dimitri Tiomkin, and is designed by Rolf Zehetbauer.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6912

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