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The Cat: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (5th February 2025). |
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The Film
 Bored housewife Jutta (A Woman in Flames' Gudrun Landgrebe) is having an affair with exciting and dangerous Probeck (Wind from the East's Götz George), and the two have plotted to a heist using her bank manager husband Ehser (A Map of the Heart's Ulrich Gebauer). At 8:30 in the morning, ex-cons Jungheim (Das Boot's Heinz Hoenig) and Britz (Decoder's Ralf Richter) take the staff hostage and raid the vault only to discover that the branch only carries a small amount on hand. Watching the bank from his hotel room across the courtyard, Probeck makes an anonymous report to the police about the robbery. Before Jungheim and Britz can leave, the courtyard has been evacuated and all entrances cordoned off. Probeck advises Jungheim on how to dodge the tactics of special forces and negotiate with the police for three million DM and a getaway car and is able to spy on their radio communication even as they constantly switch channels. When Jungheim discovers that that Voss (The Vampire Happening's Joachim Kemmer), the man who put him away years before for another robbery is in charge of the operation, he cannot resist revealing his identity and doing everything to tip the balances of power on his side with unpredictable behavior. Eventually, Voss starts to realize that Jungheim and Britz must have someone else on the outside keeping them one step ahead of their efforts, possibly the partner that got away the last time just before Voss broke Jungheim in interrogation, who must surely know that Jungheim ratted him out and be planning a double cross. When Jutta discovers that her husband knows of her affair and has photographic evidence from a private detective, she wants Probeck to make sure that her husband does not survive the heist; and she winds up with the leverage to get what she wants when she is volunteered to transport the money. Based on the novel by Uwe Erichsen, The Cat was the third feature of director Dominik Graf following his disowned first horror feature The Second Face (also the feature debut of actress Greta Scacchi) and the comedy Drei gegen drei. Graf started making films in the generation just following the German New Wave with more mainstream ambitions; and, while his first two films, earlier shorts, and television work is not readily available for English-speaking audiences, The Cat is undeservedly little-known outside of Europe as it manages to strike the right balance between gritty European crime film and Hollywood bombast along the lines of Graf's Dutch contemporary Dick Maas' stab at the international stage with Amsterdamned. The film manages to walk this tightrope by way of the gradual peeling of its story layers, starting out as a crime noir with Probeck appearing to be playing at being a criminal mastermind via technology with a dodgy heist plan and then seems to stretch credulity with his super villain stealth sabotage of the special forces gas tanks resulting in a Hollywood-style explosion until Voss conveys the backstory to his team whereupon the relationship between Voss and Jungheim becomes less important as we realize that Voss just wants to do his job and despite that Jungheim's seeming vendetta against Voss is something to pass the time and distract them and himself. From this point on, it is Jungheim and Probeck – and, to an extent, Jutta – who really "drive" the story and not exactly how we or Voss expect when he tries to play them against one another. Those three are the only ones who demonstrate real depth while the "good" characters Voss seems dispassionate and Ehser however stoic and protective of his own employees for the bulk of the film actually comes across quite badly in the end despite being targeted for assassination. Like many German filmmakers of the period who were not Wolfgang Petersen – or even Uwe Boll in the next decade – Graf has primarily worked in television between rare features – of course, he would direct episodes of Beloved Sisters about a love triangle between two sisters and poet Friedrich Schiller which either demonstrates his diverse interests or his willingness to adapt to the market. 
Video
Originally released in Germany on fullscreen DVD in 2008 with its end credits trimmed and unfolding on black, The Cat received an HD restoration in 2016 and subsequent anamorphic DVD and Blu-ray releases in 2017; however, the Blu-ray was unfortunately encoded in 1080i (we do not know if EuroVideo did this or were given the 50i TV master for the restoration's broadcast). Radiance Films' all-region 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray – also available in the U.K. from Radiance in an identical edition – utilizes the HD remaster newly graded and approved by director Graf. It starts out dark and thick with grain during the opening credits opticals and the intercut footage. Once the credits are over, however, the image is slick, crisp, and colorful with a fine rendering of grain and almost tactile textures of sweaty and bloody flesh. Reds which looked a tad dull during the credits lettering pop everywhere else, spiking the sterile, muted "German" eighties color schemes with blood and the pop of Jutta's wardrobe. 
Audio
Audio defaults to a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 rendering of the film's Dolby Stereo mix which starts out boisterously with Eric Burdon's "Good Times" which is repeated over the end credits and even sung early on by Jungheim and Britz as they puzzle out the English lyrics and their meaning in German – with gunshots, explosions, and more subtle directional effects throughout with the scuttling of Probeck and various special forces officers around the locations along with the cacophony of the climax. While the early DVD releases featured a 5.1 track and the German Blu-ray only included the 2.0 track, we presume that the 5.1 is a more recent, conservative rechanelling or of the stereo materials or at least used a good upmix algorithm since it does not have the tinny, echoey quality of those early DVD era upmixes. Optional English subtitles are free of any noticeable errors. 
Extras
Extras start off with "Good Times" (65:05) interview with director Graf in which he recalls going to film school with the ambition of making films like those of Truffaut and Rohmer until he discovered the cinema of Robert Aldrich when he visited the school while shooting Twilight's Last Gleaming at Bavaria Studios. He then discusses his work in television at Bavaria Studios under television producer Georg Feil and brief mention of his first film, meeting George while directing an episode of Tatort and Hoenig on an episode of Der Fahnder scripted by Christoph Fromm who he would bring on to flesh out the characters during the scripting of The Cat. He discusses some of the source material that was scripted but ultimately dropped including backstory of the relationship between Probeck and Jutta, scouting locations (it was ultimately author Erichsen who recommended the principal location), creating sets and a scene that he wrote himself inspired by the hotel location's corridors, George doing his own stunts, his admiration for Hoenig, and the film's central relationships including the latent homosexuality of Jungheim and Britz (whose warmth Graf notes prevents the film from behing "cold and technocratic").  "Beyond Good and Evil" (32:01) is an interview with screenwriter Fromm who describes the film as "amoral" and that his approach to writing is the observation of reality and fidelity to it. He recalls being skeptical about Graf directing his television movie script Treffer but admiring the results along with touching upon their other television work. He describes the source novel for The Cat as an interesting concept but blandly-written, as well as his approach to fleshing it out including a sequence depicting Probeck's and Jutta's explosive passion and the necessity of "killing your darlings." In "Against All Odds" (32:23), producer Feil recalls when he and his collaborator realized that series television rather than television movies was the direction for Bavaria Studios' television arm, seeking out not only literary sources but writers who could adapt their work to a series approach at a time when you could actually make a living as a writer – noting that Fromm started out wanting to be a director – and the degree of creative freedom in developing stories for their series. While the source novel for The Cat was not what they had in mind initially, a feature film project was always an inevitability, and that he discovered the novel when he recruited Erichsen to be a screenwriter. He also discusses the contributions of Fromm and Graf to Erichsen's initial script draft and various changes across drafts, funding the film, and the logistics of staging the action along with a humorous false alarm involving the supposed theft of thee production's wardrobe. The disc also includes a select-scene commentary by director Dominik Graf over three scenes including the scene where Jungheim drags a stripped cashier (Sabine Kaack) out as a human shield, noting that the "funny bra" was an improvised idea and not in the script, the sequence in which Probeck sabotages the gas truck in which they reveal that George choreographed his actions himself, and another scene that they reveal was copied by the perpetrators of the 1988 Gladbeck hostage crisis. The disc also includes the film's theatrical trailer (1:52). 
Packaging
The limited edition of 3,000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings, and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow.
Overall
Little known in English-speaking territories, The Cat is not only a cracking thriller but also an appetizing teaser for the film and television filmography of director Dominik Graf.
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