End of the Game (4 Stars)

This is a German film, made in English in 1975. It's based on the novel "The Judge and his Hangman" ("Der Richter und sein Henker") by the Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It was the first of only five novels written by Dürrenmatt.

I discovered Dürrenmatt while I was at school. In the fifth form (tenth grade) I had to read "Suspicion" ("Der Verdacht"), Dürrenmatt's second novel, in the original German. I'd previously read short stories in German, but this was my first full length novel. I loved it straight away. It was a detective story that deliberately broke all the rules of detective stories. Inspector Bärlach was solving a crime while suffering from terminal cancer and unable to stand up. Many other details which I shan't name here were untypical for detective stories.

After reading this book I borrowed Dürrenmatt's first novel, "Der Richter und sein Henker", from my school library. It also featured Inspector Bärlach, already diagnosed with stomach cancer, but still on his feet. I enjoyed it so much that I began to read Dürrenmatt's plays. In the following summer holidays I read all of his plays that he'd written until then. (He was still alive and writing more). They were relatively short. I managed to read one play every day, lying on my deck chair in my parents' back garden. Those were the good old days.

After Dürrenmatt's death in 1990 I bought a collection of his complete works. I was older and had a tough job, so I had less time to read. I barely began to read it when it was thrown away by accident. My wife thought it was an old set of books that belonged to her parents, and when they said they didn't want them they were dumped in the trash. Stupid.

I saw "End of the Game" in a cinema while I was studying in Berlin. It was only a few years since I'd read the book, so I immediately noticed a few changes in the details. Luckily, the book's main premise has been retained in the film.

The story begins in Istanbul in 1948. Two young men, both from Switzerland, meet and become close friends. Hans Bärlach is a policeman, temporarily assigned to the Turkish police force. Richard Gastmann is a businessman. Gastmann makes a bet that he can kill someone in broad daylight and not be found guilty. Bärlach accepts the bet. Gastmann promptly knocks Bärlach's girlfriend unconscious and pushes her off a bridge. She drowns. In the following police investigations Bärlach is the main suspect, but her death is eventually ruled a suicide. Gastmann won the bet.

30 years later, Bärlach is a police inspector in Bern. Gastmann is a senior diplomat, above the law. He boasts to Bärlach that he's killed at least 50 people, and he'll never be caught. Bärlach's time is running out. He has cancer, and he's told he only has a year to live. He's determined to catch Gastmann before he dies. A local policeman is killed. Bärlach quickly deduces who the killer is, but he decides to frame Gastmann for the murder. If Gastmann is too clever to be found guilty of the murders he's committed, he should be found guilty of a murder he didn't commit.

This is a fascinating moral dilemma. Is Bärlach a good cop or a crooked cop? It depends on how you look at it. Gastmann isn't innocent. He's one of the biggest murderers in Switzerland, so Bärlach is doing everyone a favour by getting rid of him.

Inspector Bärlach is supported by an ambitious young detective, Walter Tschanz. He's close to solving the case, so Bärlach has to slow him down by planting false evidence.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt himself appears in the film as an eccentric old writer called Friedrich. That's amusing.

Is it a good film? I enjoy it as a fairly accurate adaptation of one of my favourite books, but I have a question to anyone who's never read the book: can you understand what's happening? I suspect it might be confusing to anyone who doesn't know the story already. Maybe.

The film has only been released on DVD and Blu-ray in Germany, but the discs include the original English dialogue.