Emil and the Detectives (1964)

We’re in the middle of a sweet spot when it comes to the Disney live-action films! I loved Thomasina, I liked Moon-Spinners, and of course we had Mary Poppins. That’s three good live-action films in a row! A new record! Can we make it four?

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Emil and the Detectives is probably Erich Kästner’s best-known work, mostly the Jewish author’s books were burned in Germany during World War II but also because it launched the whole genre of childrens’ detective stories Interestingly, we’ve seen one of his works adapted before, and that film is much more famous than this one. Kästner also wrote the book that inspired The Parent Trap. The relative unknowns behind the camera may contribue to this film’s obscurity. A.J. Carothers returns to writer, though his previous Disney credit was the dreary and forgotten Miracle of the White Stallions. Peter Tewksbury had very little experience writing for film, though he had several well-known TV credits including Father Knows Best and My Three Sons (featuring my old nemesis Fred MacMurray). Still, it got reasonably positive reviews and didn’t bankrupt the studio, so how bad can it be?

STORY

I’m pretty used to animated credits sequences by now, but this one is the cleverest I’ve seen since Dalmatians. It’s informative, teaching us that our hero’s name is pronounced A-Mill and introducing the word “skrinks” as slang for criminals. Not only that, but it mimics classic film noir imagery by painting peoples’ names on blinds as they open and shut on the skrinks’ shady dealings. It’s very, very cute. When we enter the movie proper, a narrator steps in. I groaned when I heard him, expecting a repeat of The Incredible Journey or Nikki. There’s no dialogue for the first few minutes, just this gruff voice telling us everything that happens. That never bodes well. But in retrospect, it works pretty well. There’s this cute, ironic juxtaposition between the film noir voice and the bright colors and peppy flute music he talks over.

Mr. Film Noire Man tells us all about Emil Tischbein and the trip he’s about to take to Berlin. His mother fusses over him and pins 400 marks to his jacket (about $620 in today’s dollars) to bring to his grandmother there. By the way, she doesn’t have any lines in this film, but the actress who plays the mother, Eva Ingeborg Scholz, voiced Cinderella in the German dub. That’s the second-closest thing we have to a familiar face in this one. As Mrs. Tischbein fusses over her son, she fails to notice the skrink lurking behind a wall. August “The Mole” Grundeis is a master class in character design. Only one type of character would wear a brightly colored checked suit and a bowler hat in a family film, and that’s an ineffectual comic villain.

The bus pulls up and everything starts moving in fast motion to match the narrator’s claim that “events now begin to move rapidly toward their inevitable climax.” I’m going to say this a lot in this movie: the visual gags are on point. Emil hops on the bus as his mother waves without noticing Grundeis following in the chaos. As the bus rolls towards Berlin, Emil passes the time by making some small talk with the other passengers. This comes back to bite him pretty quickly when Grundeis sleazes his way into the seat behind him to take advantage of the boy’s natural friendliness. He even offers him candy, but Emil knows you never take candy from strangers. We spend way too long watching Grundeis pop jellybeans off the back of his hand and catch them in his mouth. When we finally cut to the chase, the swaying of Grundeis’s pocket watch hypnotizes both Emil and Grundeis into a deep sleep.

That backfired on Grundeis, but it ends up not mattering because he wakes up first. As Emil snoozes away, Grundeis snatches the money out of Emil’s jacket. The next time the bus stops, he books it out of there, taking the money with him. Emil wakes up to the sound of street noise and immediately notices that his 400 marks are gone! Panicking, he jumps off the bus at the wrong stop, thinking of nothing but getting Grundeis. His mad dash knocks over another boy who, in turn, chases after him, all the way to a fancy café. Emil can’t go into a place like that with no money, leaving him powerless to do anything but watch as Grundeis spends his stolen money on lunch. The other boy honks the bicycle horn he carries everywhere and introduces himself as Gustav Fleishmann, a jack-of-all trades.

One of Gustav’s jobs, the most important one, is that of a private detective. At first, Emil is reluctant to accept legal help from a twelve-year-old, but after getting shut down rather rudely by the police he agrees to tell his story. Little do the kids know Grundeis is more than a simple pickpocket. He’s waiting in the café to rendezvous with two other, more powerful skrinks: Werner “The Baron” Von Breugel and his henchman, Bruno Müller. Neither of them thinks much of Grundeis’s incompetence but they don’t call him The Mole for nothing. He’s too good at tunnelling to just bump off, so good he singlehandedly dug a smuggling line under the Berlin Wall. As they prepare to leave, The Baron slips Grundeis a note telling him to meet him at the Hotel Kried at 6 PM.

We catch back up with Emil and Gustav just as Emil finishes up his story and I am so happy the summary was offscreen. There are two acceptable ways to recap things the audience has already seen without driving me crazy. One is to cut away as he starts and come back at the end, like this. The other way is Olaf. Anyway, Gustav agrees to take the case and the two creep around the side of the café to catch Grundeis leaving. On Gustav’s order, Emil slips into the café to switch the bills on the table with fresh ones so they can use the pinholes as evidence. Gustav himself tails Grundeis but loses him as he disappears down a subway, leaving only the note behind him. Unfortunately, the note falls into the gutter, washing away the name of the hotel. It’s okay, though. Gustav has a plan.

The bus pulls in to the station, right in front of Emil’s waiting grandmother and his cousin Pony. True to form for the adults in this movie, the bus station worker proves no use at all when the grandmother reports her missing grandson, even when the old woman grows more panicked by the moment. Naturally, being a child, Pony remains levelheaded and decides Emil must be on a later bus than they thought. Of course, he’s not. He’s riding Gustav’s bike through Berlin, honking the horn to alert the other five detectives. Each one gets a cute little character introduction but by far the best is the little boy washing windows. When he hears the bike horn, he drops everything to come outside and we find that what we thought was his reflection is really his twin! Seriously, the visual gags in this movie are great.

One long, spiral staircase later, the detectives gather in their super secret headquarters, also known as one kid’s apartment. They all show off their shiny silver detective badges and introduce themselves. There’s Hermann, the sketch artist and messenger boy. Hans and Rudolf fill the stereotype of “finish each others sandwiches and bicker a lot” twins. Reinhardt goes by the nickname “The Professor” because he’s smart and uses a lot of big words. Finally, we have little Dienstag, whose parents own this apartment and who holds down the fort because a past case broke his leg. Now that we’re all acquainted, Gustav presents the facts of the case to his friends. But their location isn’t as secure as they hoped. Dienstag’s sister is right in the next room, yakking away on the telephone with her ex-boyfriend, not only tying up their lines of communication but compromising their intel.

The note is the most pressing matter. They have about an hour and a half to figure out which hotel the skrinks will be meeting at. Credit where credit is due, they delegate tasks really efficiently, more efficiently than some real life organizations. However, Emil can’t pound the pavement with the rest of them. He’s the client. Instead, he drafts a letter to his grandmother to assure her that he’s okay. When it’s done, Hermann takes off on his bike to play delivery boy. Now it’s just Emil and Dienstag, but they have an important mission of their own. They have to get that telephone back from Dienstag’s sister. To do that, Diestag pretends her new boyfriend (that sounds like a story all in itself!) is at the door and locks her out of the telephone room. Success! Man, you can tell this movie was made in the ‘60s just from the existence of a telephone room.

Hermann arrives at Emil’s grandmother’s house and flaps the mail slot without dropping the letter for… some reason. The noise gets Pony’s attention and she pretends to be the damsel in distress she just saw on TV, demanding answers and threatening to scream in the most unnecessarily dramatic way possible. It probably doesn’t help that Hermann acts all squirrelly whenever she gets close to figuring out he’s here about her missing cousin. But she does figure it out, forcing Hermann to reassure her that he’s just taking care of some money troubles. He runs off, leaving her with the incredibly vague note. Now she’s suspicious and determined, so she takes off for Berlin herself. That was a disaster, and the other detectives aren’t having much luck either. Every time they think they see Grundeis, it turns out to be another false alarm (as shown by more great visual gags). Finally, though, Gustav passes The Baron and Müller, then runs right into Grundeis outside! Jackpot!

Boredom and lack of information start to get to Emil and Dienstag after a while. All they have to do is fend off Dienstag’s irate sister. Finally, the phone rings and they get the scoop they’ve been waiting for: Gustav found the skrink at Hotel Kried! Emil thanks Dienstag for his help and rushes off to join them, almost running right into Hermann. The other detective announces he delivered the letter and offers him a ride on his bike to the hotel so he can catch up faster. Little do they know Pony just got off the train to Berlin and she’s after them. Meanwhile, while listening to the skrinks plot through the window, Gustav and the twins realize they’ve stumbled into something way bigger than 400 marks. Grundeis and Müller are two-bit thugs but The Baron is a big deal. They’re planning to tunnel their way under the city into a bank vault, starting tonight! Gustav wave Emil and Hermann up to the balcony so the can share what they’ve learned, but before they get there, Grundeis leaves.

The detectives creep under a bridge observe without being seen, though Rudolph’s hiccups nearly give them away. They follow Grundeis into an old abandoned building, except for The Professor, who goes to get the police for help. Before they can come up with a plan, Pony springs out to demand answers. Emil politely introduces her to everyone so she can be included but Gustav just wants her gone. Pony’s having none of that, not until she gets a story (she’s a reporter for her school newspaper), and if he tries to make her leave she’ll spill everything to their grandmother. Now they have no choice but to bring her along. The Professor leads a police officer named Wachtmeister Stucke to the rubble in the hopes of catching the crook. Unfortunately, Grundeis seems to have vanished. Instead of continuing the search, Stucke freaks out and starts yelling about bratty kids who prank him all the time, them storms away.

Embarrassed, the kids come up with excuses to file out. Pony tries to take Emil with her but he can’t face his grandmother without those 400 marks. Gustav stays too, partly because he’s dedicated and partly because his home life sounds pretty rough. When they’re alone, Emil thanks him for sticking with it. No matter how roguish and carefree Gustav pretends to be, the power of friendship is strong with this one. It’s pretty cute. They fall asleep under a roof and wake the next morning to a car backfiring. Müller and The Baron step out, loudly proclaiming how great it is to be out early in the morning when no one can witness their misdeeds. Oh, the irony. Of course Emil and Gustav spy on them. After they split up, Emil slips on a loose brick and falls down a hole into a suspicious tunnel. At the end , they find the two skrinks enjoying a fancy breakfast as you do in the middle of a sewer. And they packed TNT with their wine and biscuits. Casual.

Gustav tries to signal to Emil by honking his bicycle horn, but he doesn’t show. Now he panicks, throwing caution to the wind and screaming his friend’s name at the top of his lungs. The skrinks hear the noise and jump up to conduct an investigation of their own. Emil hides behind a staircase and they almost miss him. But he sneezes. The Baron catches him. Upstairs, the other detectives have returned, forcing Gustav to admit he lost Emil. None of them want to tell Pony what happened when she reappears, but of course they don’t have a choice. But the longer they sulk, the longer Emil stays missing. Before they can search, Pony takes them to task for playing pretend when there’s someone in real danger. Gustav tries to remind her that that’s directly against Emil’s wishes but the other kids agree that this is serious. They need the police. Only Gustav stays behind.

Down in the tunnels, The Baron and Müller play cards while waiting for Grundeis to show. Their young prisoner struggles against his ropes, but it’s useless. As it turns out, Grundeis is already hard at work on the tunnel, though the work goes too slowly for Müller’s taste. Emil notices the pickpocket and goes postal, demanding his money back. When The Baron finds out, he’s just as angry, though of course he doesn’t care about the kid. He just can’t believe Grundeis would be stupid enough to jeopardize their whole plan over 400 measly marks. He’s clearly about to evil monologue but before Emil can learn what’s going on, Grundeis announces they found the vault. As they drag Emil along, The Baron reminisces about his past crimes the whole way. Even Müller starts to get fed up with him. Slipping down a ladder into filthy sewer water then piggy-backing both Emil and The Baron across probably doesn’t help.

The kids’ search for help doesn’t go well. As they try to report what happened, Wachtmeister Stucke shows up at the worst possible time to discredit everything. Instead of taking it seriously, his fellow officers toss a pile of photos at them so they can “identify the criminal”. How about you investigate the ruins, guys? Come on. There’s a kid missing. And, as The Baron notices, he’s missing down some very unstable tunnels that are liable to cave in at the most dramatic possible moment. Naturally, the kids start to get discouraged. Pony decides the only thing left to do is call her father. Meanwhile, Gustav never stops searching for Emil. He’s crying now, and it’s actually pretty heartwrenching.

BOOM!

At 9:00 on the dot, an explosion rocks the abandoned building. The tunnel walls crumble, leaving the path to the bank vault clear. Or part of it, anyway. They didn’t use enough dynamite and the hole isn’t big enough for a grown man to fit through. It’s a good thing they have a small child in tow! Obviously Emil is not on board with this. He kicks Müller the second he unties him, but before he can run The Baron pulls a gun on him. Refusal is not an option. Emil reluctantly crawls into the vault, dodging the gun. The Baron catches him searching for an escape route and fires a warning shot. Poor Emil has no choice but to drop bags of money down to the skrinks below.

Luck isn’t on Emil’s side right now, but it’s a different story for the other detectives. They finally find Grundeis’s photo! And Müller’s! And The Baron’s! And then their luck runs out. The police think The Baron is dead, so they write off the kids’ testimony as childish games. I guess they think they spent hours picking photos at random or something. Adults are useless. Dejected, the kids file out to help Gustav search for Emil. He was right. They have to do this themselves. Pony stays behind long enough to overhear the officers saying no one ever actually confirmed The Baron’s death. That sounds like an important step to this case, but whatever. She asks the police to call her father but the officer’s phone rings. Funnily enough, it seems to be her father, reporting his missing nephew and the explosion he witnessed. Now that an adult has told the exact same story, the officers finally get their tails in gear. But there’s a plot twist! It’s not her dad at all— it’s Gustav!

Meanwhile, Emil finishes up the bank heist, dropping the last money bag into the skrinks’ basket. Grundeis reaches in to get him out, but Emil socks him in the eye before he can lay hands on him. The scuffle causes them to lag behind, which provides the perfect opportunity for The Baron to go all Cask of Amontillado on them. He orders Müller to cave in the tunnel and get rid of the incompetent goon and the baggage for good, then head back up to the street. They don’t count on a bunch of children overhearing everything. Gustav jumps down the hole in search of Emil while the rest tail the two remaining skrinks. Somehow they manage to push a whole car right into a traffic cop for a little petty revenge, which is nice and all. Wachtmeister Stucke arrives shortly after, too, but of course it’s not going to be that easy. The clock strikes ten and the second round of dynamite smashes the tunnels, trapping Grundeis and Emil inside. Oh, and Gustav was trying and failing to put out the fuse at the time. So that’s not good.

Pony flings open the squad car door to help her cousin but Wachtmeister Stucke shoves her pretty roughly back in the car. Grundeis and Emil are left to panic as the sewer water begins to rise. Wachtmeister Stucke finds Gustav’s hat among the rubble. Then they find Gustav, because Disney wouldn’t kill a child protagonist just like that. What do you think this is, Bridge to Terabithia? He’s not only unharmed after holding exploding dynamite in his hand, he’s perfectly happy! Wachtmeister Stucke thinks he’s Emil, then he hears the real Emil crying for help under a grate. He and Gustav pry the rubble away and let Emil and Grundeis tumble out to safety. Please with himself, Gustav hands the stunned officer a business card announcing that he’s a real private detective. All’s well that ends well!

But wait! What about the other two skrinks? They nonchalantly strut down street, carrying their basket of ill-gotten gains. Our little detectives spread a rumor that these oh-so generous men keep dropping money on the street, encouraging their friends to come out and get some. Soon all the children of Berlin swarm behind them, grabbing at the basket and blocking their way. The commotion draws in the cops and soon they arrest The Baron and Müller at long last! Under the supervision of Emil’s mother, the kids file into the police station just as the cops finish getting the skrinks’ mugshots. The Baron idly requests a nice view of the Alps so he can write his memoirs in prison because that’s how that works when you’re rich I guess. The kids beam widely as they show off their detective badges for the newspapers. Emil’s got some serious reward money coming to him, much more than the 400 marks that started it all. All his friends wave goodbye…. all except one. Gustav’s slight crushes Emil, but it’s okay. He meets Emil and his mom outside to offer a tour of Berlin! The narrator wraps things up with a grave warning: “the world is full of skrinks.”

That was, indeed, a fourth good live-action film in a row! The bank heist plot and the stolen marks wove together really well, and the characters were tons of fun. Even the individual kids never felt like a homogenous mass in the way large casts often do (looking at you, Ten Who Dared). I know I kind of lumped them all together as “the young detectives” a lot in the review, but each one has a distinct personality that makes the minor ones all just as compelling as Emil and Gustav. The child acting was uncommonly good even if they all sounded like The Peanuts (I know they’re kid actors around the same time period but seriously, it’s a one-to-one comparison). Some of the writing, especially the determination to make “skrinks” happen, felt like it was geared to a younger audience instead of a family audience, but not in a way that made me hate it. Old-school Disney has a real knack for not talking down to children that I’ve always appreciated. All in all, Mary Poppins is a tough act to follow, and Emil and The Detectives pulled it off pretty well!

CHARACTERS

Emil Tischbein (which means “table leg” in German) is a scrappy little kid even before the detectives turn up, and I’m kind of here for it. A lot of Disney protagonists of this period, notably Wart and Mowgli, have this really bad habit of becoming ciphers. I’m pleased to say Emil bucked the trend. He’s ready to throw down and get Grundeis all by himself, in a big, unfamiliar city. It’s hard not to root for that kind of determination. He learns the power of friendship when he gets a little backup, but you really believe that he could have done it himself… eventually. Then again, he’s willing to admit when he’s in over his head. Getting thrown into a bank vault by a notorious crime boss is a step above chasing down some second-rate pickpocket. I don’t blame him for that one. Apparently we’ve seen Bryan Russell before in Babes in Toyland, but I don’t remember him at all. The only kids I noticed in the amalgamation of small children were the Corcoran brothers. I’m surprised he’s only in three Disney films, one of which is a bit part. He was excellent!

Gustav Fleishmann is an expy of The Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist. The similarities are uncanny: both are carefree rogues who, when push comes to shove, aren’t quite as carefree as it seems. Both are street smart with a decidedly tragic backstory (though Gustav’s is only mentioned in one line). Now, my comparison might be a little skewed because I haven’t actually read Oliver Twist (yet), but I have seen the play and it seemed pretty close to me. He also dressed like a stereotypical Bavarian in Berlin for no reason. I’m not sure where that came from. He’s a cutie, with the savvy Emil needs to tone back all that fight and sass, but I’d really have liked to see more of him. This was Roger Mobley’s only Disney theatrical film for some reason, even though he was also great. He did, however, lead several TV movies and serials on The Wonderful World of Disney so that’s something!

Brunhilde “Pony” Heimbold aspires to be a journalist, which I neglected to mention. Her dogged pursuit of the detectives doesn’t just come from her concern for her cousin. She’s got that selfish ulterior motive, too, which makes her a weirdly deep character for a movie like this. I also really found her flair for the dramatic hilarious. Remember when I said all the kid actors in this reminded me of the Peanuts? Well, her resemblance to Lucy is uncanny. Cindy Cassell even looks like her! She appeared in Daniel Boone alongside Old Squinty Eyes himself, Fess Parker, but that’s her only other Disney work.

August “The Mole” Grundeis is a really interesting character, in that our perception of him changes wildly throughout the movie. His design, as I mentioned, screams “goofy ineffectual comic crook”, but for the first chunk of the movie, he’s our main bad guy. It’s only later that he fulfills the role we would expect. It’s an interesting subversion of expectations. Also, Heinz Schubert’s facial expressions make this movie.

Bruno Müller is The Baron’s other henchman. Unlike Grundeis, he’s actually competent. He distrusts Grundeis, mostly because he’s proven to be pretty useless, and grows more and more frustrated with his boss throughout the film. However, he never betrays the Baron, no matter how much ill treatment he puts up with. Gotta admire that. He’s definitely the least fleshed out of the three skrinks, though, which is a shame. I’d like to see more from Peter Ehrlich than just constantly being done with everyone around him.

Werner “The Baron” Von Breugel loooooves the sound of his own voice. He’s constantly monologuing, even when it’s not relevant to anything that’s happening. When they’re dragging Emil through the tunnels, he’s bragging about a past jewel theft for no reason at all. He’s actually pretty funny, except for the whole “willing to shoot a child” thing. I’ve got to admire a villain that takes pride in being evil. Like Grundeis, he manages the balance between funny and affably evil very nicely, though his scales are tipped slightly further in the “evil” direction. You don’t get to be The Big Bad otherwise. Walter Slezak was the closest this movie had to star power, as he was well known around this time for playing villains in American and German films. I still have no idea who he is, but I liked him very much in this!

MUSIC

I’m doing something a little different with the Music section here, because Heinz Schreiter’s score for this film deserves to speak for itself. It’s excellent, so much more memorable than his work on Almost Angels. That wasn’t even bad, but this is so, so good. It perfectly captures the feel of a film noir without once letting things get too serious. It’s hard to explain and most of my notes are just “this music is a bop” or “daaaa DUN daaaa DUN daaaaananandundun” which is super not helpful. I need to not take notes at 2AM. What I did note was how well this score does at telling Emil’s story without dialogue, something I will always praise any time I see it.

ARTISTRY

The sets and costumes of this film are so quintessentially sixties that it holds up as a period piece even though it was made in 1964. Everything is all clean lines and bright colors that make this stand apart from the usually gritty detective genre. It reminded me of Pushing Daisies (look it up, the design for that show was glorious). As for the cinematography, all outdoor shots were shot on location in Berlin, allowing recognizable landmarks to ground the quirky story in reality. The tunnel scenes can be hard to see, but I didn’t hate that like I usually do. We want those scenes to be dark- they’re the most dramatic ones.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The ‘60s got off to a pretty rough start, but we seem to have hit our stride! Emil and the Detectives was another pleasant surprise that I would highly recommend to anyone who likes mysteries. It’s a shame this one hasn’t really caught on, because it’s nothing but charming the whole way through. Maybe it’ll find new life now that it’s on Disney+! And whoever buried this film in the vault in the first place is just a skrink.

Favorite scene: The astoundingly clever visual gag where one twin is washing the windows and the other looks like his reflection. I laughed out loud!

Final rating: 8/10. We found another 1960’s hidden gem! It’s weird, I keep hating the popular movies and loving the ones no one’s ever heard of. What gives?