Der Verlorene

Der Verlorene would have been remarkable in virtually any context; as a product of the depressed German film industry of the post-war years, it's absolutely phenomenal. It was Lorre's only film as writer/director, and it clearly represents a personal comment on the side of Germany that forced him into exile in 1933, just as his own performance in the lead is a rethinking of the psychopath roles that he played in M and many Hollywood movies. The plot, developed entirely in flashbacks, shows how research doctor Rothe (Lorre) is forced into political complicity with the Nazis by their shrewd, cold-blooded exploitation of his emotional and psychological weaknesses; everything about it (including the spasms of expressionism in the imagery) is haunted by a sense of the German past, until the powerhouse melodrama of the ending rockets the film into the even bleaker present.