A very obscure thriller - both in the sense that it's very hard to find (I actually saw what seemed to be the imported British version, under the title "Deception"; the print was in terrible condition), and also in the sense that it has a very murky structure and characters with motivations that are pretty hard to understand, unless perhaps you've read the book. Some good twists and interesting performances (especially by Robert Shaw as the politically powerful villain)....but hold off watching it until you come across a decent print. (**1/2)
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rmax30482317 February 2009At the very opening, we see a Swiss police officer stop beside a parked car on a hillside. The officer opens the door. There is a corpse inside with a bullet hole in his temple.
So what does the policeman do? Does he go back to his own car and radio headquarters to report a homicide? Does the police force descend upon the crime scene, seal it off with tape to preserve its integrity, and examine the ground and take photos of the body? No. No, the policeman gets into the dead man's car, starts it up, and drives into town with the corpse nodding beside him. A woman in a passing car is horrified by the sight of the bloody head, so the officer tries to perch his own police cap atop the corpse. The attempt is unsuccessful and the body jiggles and collapses against the dash.
Now that's a weird opening for a murder mystery but then this film is something outré from beginning to end. The story, by the well-known Swiss author, Friedrich Durrenmatt, involves no more than the usual number of convolutions and winds up with a surprise ending. But the direction is by Max Schell, a highly underrated actor, who's done some enterprising work as a director too.
He opts for a considerably stylized approach to the material. "I think I'm going to croak," groans the police commissioner (Martin Ritt, also an actor/director), sounding more like a man complaining of a hangover. "Well, I hope you feel better!" chirps his assistant, John Voight, in a completely anomalous, cheery tone of voice.
Ritt's commissioner really is ill and is schedule for an operation in a short while that may give him an extra year of life. A consequence of his illness is that he can't eat anything or drink any stimulating fluids. Throughout the film, maddeningly, others keep offering him schnapps or a piece of cake, all of which he must refuse until the reveal at the end, when he solves the case and, with gusto, stuffs himself full of soup, wurst, sauerkraut, and huge wedges of Emmenthaler cheese.
But, as I say, there are unexpected incidental touches in almost every scene. The initial corpse turns out to be that of another police officer. And we see perhaps two dozen people dressed in dark clothes standing around in the autumnal foliage while someone reads over the casket and a brass band plays a lament. But the threnody take on a subtle, more lively lilt. Soon, some of the mourners are tapping their feet. Then a row of four or five dark figures begin bobbing slightly up and down to the tune, by Ennio Moriconne out of Nino Rota.
And that's nothing. An icy rain begins to fall. The mourners are quickly drenched and look as if they're about to freeze. And two more figures come literally dancing down the slope to drop a wreath on the coffin before dancing away. The wreath has the wrong name on it, but as it turns out, the cadaver was undercover and had two identities and whoever ordered the wreath got them mixed up. And so it goes.
Sometimes Schell takes the story seriously. There are several shooting deaths. (Only one of them is turned into a semi-joke.) Jacqueline Bissett has the role of the girl who belongs to three men, the evil and egotistical villain Robert Shaw, the corpse, and John Voight's ever-smiling policeman. I can't figure out just what it is that informs Bissett's beauty, what it is that brings her so close to feminine perfection. Certainly her eyes have something to do with it. They slant at an ideal dihedral and they're sometimes blue, sometimes the color of a light turmeric, and as we all know, the eyes are the windows of the occiput. She has a generous bosom but I discount that.
Martin Ritt is surprisingly effective as the worn-out, cynical, old cop. His features are over-sized, as are his black-rimmed glasses, and he has quadruple chins, smokes cigars, and his clothes are as shabby as his carefully cluttered apartment. Voight is good too, but then he always is.
As a murder mystery, this is pretty sloppy work. As a thing unto itself, it's not at all bad.
Madonna, it is always cold, foggy, and cloudy in Bern, hardly a healthy place to live. No wonder the commissioner is ill. -
blanche-215 April 2009"End of the Game," a 1975 film directed by Maximilian Schell, isn't a standard murder mystery. Set in Europe, Martin Ritt (Hans Baerlach) is a Swiss police detective trying to capture a man named Gastmann (Robert Shaw). Thirty years earlier, Gastmann killed a woman in front of Ritt and was never prosecuted. When Ritt's partner is killed, he gets a new one, Walter (Jon Voight).
Ritt is excellent as a man determined to carry out this assignment despite facing death himself. Donald Sutherland, in an early role, plays the murdered detective in photos and as a corpse. The beautiful Jacqueline Bisset is the late detective's girlfriend. Robert Shaw is his usual hateful and smooth self. Voight does a good job, playing his role in a somewhat frenzied manner. He's also has a big nude scene.
"End of the Game" has a very European feel to it, and a host of accents from all over the place. It's unclear if they were all supposed to be speaking the same language or not. Accents aren't necessary, for instance, if you're a German living in Germany because you're not speaking English with an accent, you're speaking German. I suppose one can assume whatever language the characters were speaking, they had regional accents.
Fascinating film, the type of which one saw made more in the '70s than today - uneven, remote, but interesting. -
Ty-2225 April 1999Aside from this being one of Voigt's finest acting performances, this film has such a compellingly haunting quality, that I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since seeing on the local PBS TV station about 15 years ago.
It's a must see for film noir and Hitchcock fans. I found it emotionally gripping much in the same way as did Orson Welles 3rd Man. -
This very artsy movie has within it the elements of a fine noir thriller, but stumbles over its own excesses. First the good news: there are three superb performances here. Martin Ritt (best known as director of "Norma Rae","Hud", "Sounder", "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", and many others), is superb as the weary but guileful old detective out to settle a score. So is Jon Voight as his newly assigned assistant; Voight's performance right from the beginning suggests he is a seriously unbalanced character and makes much of the remaining action plausible. Though dismissed by some reviewers as bad acting, this really was the only way to make this character work. Finally, Robert Shaw is the bloodless villain, recreating essentially the same character as he did the previous year in "The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three." Now for the bad news: the plot is murky and the ending illogical; the direction and cinematography are grotesque (apparently there is more fog in Switzerland than London and Kodak had a special on grainy film); and the score is so whimsical that it suggests a parody of the genre. Best subtle scene: after Martin Ritt's character is apparently mauled by the Shaw character's guard dog, he (out of everyone's sight) removes a protective shield he had under his coat. That's a first clue that the old detective is up to something.
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adrianovasconcelos30 March 2024DER RICHTER UND SEIN HENKER, a book written by Swiss author Friedrich Durrenmatt and first published in 1950, carried the literally translated title, THE JUDGE AND HIS HANGMAN, when it came out in English translation.
Maximilian Schell, winner of a Best Actor Oscar in 1961, directed this film with the title of END OF THE GAME. Not only does he drift from the original title, he also imbues the plot with a pseudo intellectualism that becomes increasingly annoying until the final suicide - which left me completely baffled. I really could not understand the wherefore of that finale.
It would appear that Inspector Barlach (Martin Ritt, who achieved cinematic fame as a film director) is engaging in a chess game with master criminal Gastmann (Robert Shaw), with humans disposed of as readily and coldly as so many pawns on a chess board. But that is only my perception, and I fear I may have got it completely wrong because the film is so meaninglessly convoluted.
Interesting to see two great-looking leads - Bisset and Voight, the latter with his dick bobbing up and down as he runs - have sex the moment they meet after her boyfriend's funeral. I found it puzzling that Donald Sutherland, by 1975 a great actor in his own right, should agree to play the part of a dead body but that is only another one of many rather absurd developments. For instance, I could not grasp whether Martin Ritt played only the part of Inspector Barlach, as he seemed to be two people, one of whom displayed a gluttonous appetite at the end, behaving in a manner rather unlike the hitherto rather restrained inspector.
Why Schell should engage in rather amateurish and unsteady directing instead of doing what he was best at, acting, only he would know - but the spectator is far from well served by Schell's choice. 6/10. -
SgtSchultz0025 November 2005Well as others have commented there is some great acting here. My favorite is Robert Shaw as the villain, but Martin Ritt as the inspector is also quite good.
The problem is that the plot mostly makes absolutely no sense (I can't believe they didn't somehow change what was in the book), and the denouement is more or less unfathomable. It's almost like they had a great setup and didn't know how to explain things or end them.
As others mentioned, the film is enveloped in fog and is quite grainy. Switzerland was never that foggy when I was there! And the music didn't really match the action on the film.
All in all, from what I can tell, skip this and try the book. -
osloj13 April 2016It's based on Friedrich Durrenmatt's own crime novella, "The Judge and His Hangman" (1950). So if you've read Durrenmatt, you'll know he's sort of an absurdist like Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco.
I liked the film at the start, it's oddly weird, especially the funeral of Donald Sutherland with musical mourners and precipitation. It's hilarious. Another funny scene is when Donald Sutherland is being driven in a car by a Swiss cop and he keeps falling over in the seat.
I think the problem ultimately is that the whole film seemed like some idiotic farce that was entirely pointless, and it threw in an "unexpected ending" type of denouement that was weak.
Donald Sutherland is some cop who's found whacked in a car, and a Swiss Kommisar, played capably by Martin Ritt (American director, Hud (1963), The Molly Maguires (1970), Hombre (1967)) snoops around trying to find out who did it. He uses the aid of Jon Voight, who's another cop. Robert Shaw as "Gastmann" is an ominous character who may or may have not done the killing. There's plenty of fine acting and odd moments, good direction, but again, it gets bogged down too much in idiosyncratic reactions or convoluted conversations.
Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw made some type of bet involving the death/murder of some woman both of them loved.
Look for Friedrich Durrenmatt himself as some old "self-playing chess" crank who helps out Jon Voight.
It's worth a look for all its faults. -
bebromana4 September 2017I read Der Richter under Sein Henker in college German class and fell in love with it. Then we saw the German movie version, which was a dubbed version of End of the Game, and I was disappointed. Drastic changes from the source material. Anna's role has been plumped up to the point I scarcely recognized her. She appears only fleetingly in the book, is just the girlfriend of Schmied, and is more innocent. Different person pushed from the bridge. Novella is a great psychological drama; the movie is a bit a a mish-mash. After about 25 years I saw the English version of the film on TV. Book review: Wow! Movie review : Meh. It retains a shadow of the original. Maybe one day they'll do a proper adaptation.
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moonspinner5513 August 2008Maximilian Schell directed, co-produced, and co-adapted this screenplay, based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt's book "The Judge and His Hangman", about a cunning murderer who began his crimes in 1940s Istanbul with the thrill-killing of his friend's girl; thirty years later in Switzerland, the friend is now a Commissioner who links his former acquaintance to the murder of a patrolman. Jon Voight plays an investigator who has an affair with the lover of the deceased, not knowing she's also involved with the criminal suspect. Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw are the adversaries, and both are exceptional, with Shaw (in a bald cap) glimmering with decadent evil. However, Voight (his accent on and off) and Jacqueline Bisset fail to come up with anything interesting, and neither is photographed well (both look white and pasty). The film's monotonous rhythm is helped occasionally by the punchy editing, but Schell seems to lose his grip on the narrative after the intriguing opening sequences. Some of the director's small, throwaway moments are best, but his grand gestures do not work at all. *1/2 from ****
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RSamson10520 September 2005My wife & I saw this as the second feature at a drive-in (yes, that long ago) and it has stayed with us long after we've forgotten the main feature that night. A marvelous game of cat & mouse between two chess-masters, with Voight as their pawn. We've looked for it on television, on tape and on DVD ever since, hoping to decide if it was as impressive as we thought. Schell's direction is superb, building and maintaining a constant tension throughout. The actors performances are, well, what you'd expect from these actors at the top of their game. Beginning with two young men circa WWII, one betting the other that he can get away with a murder, The End of the Game ranks with the best of Le Carre's work in its examination of a master detective's plot to finally catch his bete noir in a crime.
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JohnSeal12 April 2002...and Jon Voight is its name. Woefully miscast as a Swiss police officer--no doubt in an effort to secure completion funding--Voight ruins what is otherwise a fine Durenmatt adaptation. The author himself has a cameo role, and Martin Ritt and Robert Shaw are both outstanding. Unfortunately Voight's Beatle haircut and appalling effort at a 'Germanic' accent left this viewer cold. When he's offscreen the film is slowly paced but intriguing. Fast forward through his bits and enjoy what's left, including an odd 'performance' by Donald Sutherland as a corpse.
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aromatic-27 March 2000Martin Ritt is absolutely spellbinding. He embodies one of the most unforgettable men I have ever met on the screen. It is a neat little thriller, and Shaw is fine as the would-be super-villain, but it is Ritt that still haunts my thoughts and dreams years after my three viewings of this film; I would love to get it on tape.
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Fans of foreign films in general may get more satisfaction out of this movie than those who are accustomed to more standard mystery movies. Even though the cast all speak English and it was released in English, it has a very European sensibility with the type of subtle humor and quirky idiosyncrasy rarely found in mainstream American films. Ritt plays a Swiss police detective who is bound and determined to bring down Shaw, a man who has led a life of crime, and, in particular, committed a murder before Ritt's eyes 30 years prior for which he was never prosecuted. Ritt's partner is slain in the process and he is assigned a new partner (Voight) whose job it is to solve the murder of the previous partner and finally pin down Shaw for his various crimes. Bisset plays the slain man's girlfriend who also draws the interest of Voight. While the often twisty pieces of the mystery are put together, Ritt provides a strong character study of a man who is, himself, close to death, yet longs to fulfill his mission before he peters out. The film has many memorable attributes, none more so than the appearance of Sutherland as the dead detective. He never plays the character while alive! Aside from a few photos, he is only shown rocking back and forth (in a darkly humorous way) as his body is being brought into town from the murder scene. Many of the scenes in the film have a surreal feeling and are loaded with strange little touches that are more likely to be found in French or German films. Ritt, in a rare acting appearance, gives a committed and textured performance. Voight is also strong, though his sometimes manic, wide-eyed portrayal may not be everyone's cup of tea. Bisset is always lovely to watch and she has a few decent scenes, but mostly she's window dressing in a characterization that ends up appearing pretty sleazy. Shaw has the customary amount of authority and slickness that aided him in parts of this kind throughout his career. All of these folks do a solid job of acting, but oddly, none of them have accents that even remotely match the nationality of their characters. Voight attempts the faintest accent, but he and Ritt are clearly American in their delivery. Shaw is obviously British and Bisset makes no effort in the slightest to suggest the Irishness of her character, speaking in her usual clipped UK accent. Ferzetti, an Italian, only adds to this as a Swiss police chief. The resolution of the mystery isn't all that difficult to piece together, though the reaching of it does have some moments of interest. The whole film tends to be uneven, but it's rarely uninteresting. Voight has a somewhat lengthy nude scene that would be typical for many French actors, but unusual for Americans, in which he wears only some grey socks and one sleeve from his shirt. Frontal nudity is partially shown for a couple of frames. It adds up to a movie with English-speaking actors, but with strong European sensibilities and the combination may not work for all viewers.
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A countryside cop discovers the corpse sitting behind the wheel of a car, having been killed with a shot to the head and decides to cart the body off to the next village. It turns out the corpse (Sutherland) was policeman, Lt. Schmied, assistant of commissioner Baerlach (Ritt), a grizzled veteran, suffering from a stomach disease that will likely kill him within a year. Baerlach investigates and demands a new assistant: young, ambitious policeman Tschanz (Voight). They discover that Schmied had worked undercover, seemingly on in own account, and had investigated a certain Gastmann (Shaw), an ominous "businessman" who was connections with high-ranking politicians and officials. What ensues is a cat and mouse game, which involves not only the current case but a murder that took place decades ago, a bet between two friends, a self-appointed judge and his chosen hangman.
I have to admit that Friedrich Dürrenmatts novel "The Judge and his hangman" is among my personal favorites, which I have read countless times (and still enjoy occasionally in the form of an audio-book). As far as adaptations go, Maximilian Schell has it spot on – however, I can understand how people who are not familiar with the novel will find the film awkward, sometimes strangely timed or even sketchy.
It is not that Schell is a bad director, but that he had decided to stay very close to the novel: Dürrenmatt (who had a small part as a quirky novelist) is an exceptional writer, who doesn't care much for genres or conventions. "The Judge and his hangman" is not just a mere crime-story but a crime-story that's also a moral play, a pitch-black comedy and a social commentary. In essence it's about the past (or fate, if you want) catching up on people, even if it may be at the end of their lives.
Ritt as disillusioned policeman with a past, often reminding off a Swiss Columbo, Shaw as nihilistic, cynic master-criminal and Voight playing his role (very close to the novel) as a man-child with cherub face that a grandmother would probably like to pinch but, like the rest of the characters, seems to have his own secret agenda; the cast is altogether excellent. Bisset, though very pleasant to behold, seems a little out of place (at least in the context of the novel, where her character plays a minor role at best) but Schell does a good job incorporating her into the story. Not to forget: Donald Sutherland must have had a field-day playing the most animated corpse since "Weekend at Bernie's". Story and performances are topped off by an excellent soundtrack of Ennio Morricone. "Once you've heard this music, it will never leave you completely", comments one of the figure on a marching band. I can only agree: I've had the haunting score creep up in my head ever so often for the past 30 years.
A final word of advice: I have only watched the original version once and find it rather irritating or unfitting to hear the characters talk in English. In the German synchronization the actors (with the exceptions of Shaw and Bisset) are given throaty Swiss accents, which are way more "authentic".
If you expect a run-of-the-mill who's dunnit, you might end up disappointed but as far as adaptations go, few have gotten as close to the source material as "End of the Game" (a title which is true, but I still prefer to call the film "The Judge and his hangman").
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mirko-214 July 1999I saw the movie a long time ago, in a class in (German) highschool. I remember being mesmerized by the book for which I can not find a translation in English. It's one of the greatest whodunits of all movie history. Baerlach the old Police Kommissaire has one more year to live due to illness just when a policeman is found dead on a country road near his native Swiss town. Baerlach lets his over-eager deputy Tschanz handle the investigation, knowing full well it will lead Tschanz to an old nemesis of Baerlach's, a criminal that he could never get his hands on. The investigations seem to be unsuccessful, but Baerlach knows something that Tschanz doesn't, and has a plan.
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I have described the opening scene of TEOTG to dozens of people over the years, and it always provokes a terrific reaction.
A consummate cat & mouse story of two strong wills, a tooth-achingly gorgeous woman, and a dead body. Shaw is in his usual brilliant form. Ritt's performance is extraordinary. Voight is believable and compelling. Bisset is spectacular to watch. Sutherland must have had fun playing the corpse. Directed by Maximilian Schell, and originally titled Der Richter und sein Henker and released in W Germany in 1978 (?), TEOTG became (and remains) my definitive detective mystery.
Be sure you get the full-length version in the language that you want. You won't regret renting or buying this classic film. -
drystyx3 October 2016This "murder mystery" is "more than meets the eye" to the inexperienced.
It's difficult to say "specific" things about this film without "spoiling" it.
On the artistic level, it is everything that is "correct".
I generally don't "and fool. Those of us who have lived in the hood (so to speak), hate to be manipulated, teased, and fooled.
Here, though, it is not to "manipulate", not to "tease", not to "fool", but to "validate" the characters.
What I can say is that there is a "mystical" quality as well as a "reality" quality, and the two do go hand in hand.
That is to say that this might best be called "anti materialism". Here, we see the natural world is a slave to the supernatural world in a way that shows the reality of life at the same time.
A bet is made, a sort of Satanic bet in which a "devil" character applies for the role of "Satan".
Much as the "usual suspects" apply for the role of "Satan" and make the real Satan show them up in another movie.
Except here, the one applying for Satan deals with many factors. He is well blessed, or else he would not be able to begin to apply for a "Satan" role to begin with.
This is actually something that does happen in real life. There are actual factions of satanic people, particularly in the U.S. (though this is not set in the U.S.), who tantalize, tease, and torment certain individuals with heinous crimes they know the individual hasn't the resources to prove, solve, or even accuse.
In this case, Europe is the setting. And the individual being teased has the benefit of being in some authority.
There is much more in this film. I'm not one for twists, but this time the "twists" are not "shark jumping" twists. I don't give it a 10, because I don't like being manipulated at all, so sue me.
But it gets the exceptional 9/10. There is much to like about this film, all around. -
philosopherjack12 February 2021The credits of Maximilian Schell's End of the Game suggest a kind of puzzle: director Schell is best known as an actor; the film's biggest part goes to a director, Martin Ritt, who at that point had barely acted since the 1950's; top-billing goes to Jon Voight, except that the movie identifies him as "John"; and Donald Sutherland plays a corpse. Such playfulness might suit a film that explicitly labels matters of life and death as elements of a long-running game, and the movie does have some notes of productively evasive strangeness. In other respects though, it all hangs rather heavily, and some of its key central notions don't really come off. The primary gameplayers are Ritt's police commissioner Barlach and Robert Shaw's prominent local businessman Gastmann, a man who believes his money and connections place him beyond the law - the two are bound by an incident some decades earlier in which their shared callousness caused a woman's death. In his pre-corpse days, Sutherland's character Schmeid was spying on Gastmann at Barlach's behest, but apparently in a flagrantly transparent manner (posing as a professor of a topic on which he knew nothing) - likewise, much of what follows is knowingly transparent, belonging to a chess game not worth being played in silence (although the movie's chess player character just perpetually plays himself). God is evoked numerous times, not always in the most theologically learned way (it's pointed out that Gastmann begins with G and so does God so, hey, that must mean something). Voight's character is another cop who gets caught up in the mechanism, to the extent of sleeping with Schmeid's girlfriend on the day of his funeral, but it's hard to separate the character's uncertainties from those of the actor (it's fancifully appealing now to attribute that to the moral confusion that would later consume the man). Overall, the film too often suggests a private joke not fully communicated to the viewer, but that's at least better than not sensing any joke at all.
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Tails-524 July 1999Two bullets. Twoooo bullets. Interesting? Two bullets. That just about describes the wonderful dialogue in the movie. This movie has something in common with "The Sicilian Clan" in the sense that both try to be tense thrillers, but inadvertently end up being awkward comedies. The movie's potential was severely hampered by Martin Ritt, who possesses the worst table manners in the world. He never hesitates to show the world what his food looks like after it's chewed up. Other than that, all the clumsy direction never fails to pull a chuckle or two out of you when it tries to be intelligent (e.g. when the car comes crashing off the highway. It twirls over in slow motion, then lands on the cab and makes a hilarious, synthetic crash sound.) All in all, for me the movie ranks lower than "The Sicilian Clan".
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searchanddestroy-112 December 2022I was really pleased to watch this thriller from Europe made in 1975. Yes, truly amazed, and this was not my first feeling during the first thirty minutes. I thought it would be a classic investigation after a cop death - played by Donald Sutherland. But how such a surprise as long as the story continued. A complex topic, but that you finally understand in the end, a manipulation scheme where twists become sudddenly galore. It's a really unexpected story, where the predictable fortunately disappears. No clichés here, not at all, and a Robert Shaw in a villain role that suits him so well. Yes, an excellent thriller to discover.