‘Black Gravel’ or — An Inescapable Weight?
Death makes itself immediately apparent from the start of Helmut Käutner’s ‘Black Gravel’ (1961) as we witness an animal needlessly killed and causally buried under the gravel used for building the roads to the new American air base near the German village of Sohnen.
Truck driver Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt) didn’t kill the dog but was the one who tossed it away. Robert is also stealing the gravel he is transporting and selling it on the black-market, something that’s almost an open secret with the village of Sohnen transformed by the wealth the air base has brought in from a sleepy little farming community to a nest of brothels, bars and racketeering.
When an ex-flame, Inge Gaines (Ingmar Zeisberg), re-enters his life Robert attempts to rekindle the romance, something Inge resists as she wants to remain faithful to her American husband who’s involved in the base’s construction, although it’s not long before the stolen gravel, their illicit romance and the missing dog collide after an accident triggers the covering-up of a crime in order to disguise a lesser one.
‘Black Gravel’ has enough of the elements of a noir-ish thriller set in the world of truck drivers to be considered a sort of West German cousin to films such as ‘Thieves’ Highway’ (1949) or ‘Hell Drivers’ (1957), and that’s certainly a lot of what we get although there’s something significantly darker buried under the surface of Käutner’s movie as, much like with the work of Shōhei Imamura, it deals with post-war guilt, shame, the effects of American occupation on a defeated nation and the impossibility of concealing crimes of the past.
The message is clear — a German has killed and disposed of bodies the way he would a beast in the hope the external world won’t notice. This gives ‘Black Gravel’ an oppressive feel that’s less suffocating and more the pulverising weight of the inevitable, both personal and national, as jets constantly scream over head and the spectre of the Cold War infects everything (the future appears just as black as the past). American music, fashion, cash and culture dominates, but what has it replaced in Germany? It appears to be nostalgic militarism, intolerance and murderous racism. It’s no wonder this movie caused a domestic fuss on its release.
The black and white cinematography increases this sensation of sickening unease (at one point a character complains about the unnatural light of the sun) and Käutner fills the screen with off-kilter compositions and images evoking violence and annihilation. A striking example is the jukebox smashed in anger, the splintered shards of glass giving the musical machine the look of possessing razor-sharp teeth. It’s also a sign that it is useless to look to the U.S. for salvation because the notion of American moral and cultural superiority appears to be a myth; something Inge ultimately discovers in what might be the film’s most nihilistic moment.
‘Black Gravel’ is an astonishing piece of filmmaking that works as an engaging dramatic thriller but as a critique of post-war Germany becomes crushingly devastating. It’s unremittingly bleak and as dark as the desolate earth where the reality we can’t bear to face patiently lurks.
