BERLIN & BEYOND Mar. 2025

[Chris Knipp]

DIMITRI KREBS IN THE TRAITOR

MICHAEL KRUMMENACHER: THE TRAITOR/LANDESVERRÄTER(2024)

A tale of Ernst Schrämli, first Swiss executed for treason in WWII

Newcomer Dimitri Krebs plays Ernst Schrämli, a poor but talented young singer and non-conformist in St. Gallen, the Swiss border town, who regularly clashes with authority. He is in the Swiss army, which on leave is supposed to work in a factory. He refuses.

As the strikingly tall, red-headed Krebs plays Schrämli, he is a noble, sometimes violent and dangerous, yet slightly pathetic waif who climbs trees and hides wounded birds in his pockets, and initially seems to be starving because he has no money. One of the things we non-Swiss learn is that Switzerland wasn't terribly well off during the War, not the conglomerate of super-rich banks that it is now. Soon news comes that France has just fallen. The factory owner's worker-advocate daughter Gerti, "Madame Zanelli" (Luna Wedler), is speechifying for the Swiss to resist and Ernst jumps up and supports her with song.

This catches the attention of German consulate spy August Schmid (Fabian Hinrichs). There is a premonitory whiff of gayness as Schmid sweeps Ernst into the consul's posh limo and to his digs where he plays a record for him of a famous German singer and says he can become famous as a singer too. The singer, he says, is "Erwin Lorenz," perhaps a reference to Max Lorenz, the prominent Wagnerian tenor and favorite of Hitler. Ernst looks as if he's never seen a record player up close before. He's dazzled. He is not a hater of his country: he has just led the crowd in a patriotic song, showing off his nice voice. But is the voice nice enough to dream of being famous? (Newcomer Dmitri Krebs, we're told, was a drummer before taking on this first acting role.)

Before long Ernst is feeding what "secrets" he may have from his military service to his "admirer," hoping he'll get him a visa to Germany where he must go to achieve that musical fame. Mea;nwhle he's buying a suit and camel hair overcoat and hat with the proceeds and strutting at a nightclub with his orphanage pal Max (Jonathan Ferrari), giving away that he's suspiciously flush.

In time this behavior soon gets back to Swiss authorities. St. Gallen is a small world indeed. Before long, by film's end, Ernst will be sentenced to die for treason, shot, unwillingly, by fellow soldiers. He will be the first of 17 Swiss executed in the height of the war, soldiers. (900 Swiss citizens were sentenced on counts of espionage.)

The film seeks to bring out the complexity of this story. A negative view of the Swiss executions for treason is that those 17 were have-nots who were made an example of when much higher ups cooperated extensively with the Nazis, that in fact Switzerland was a covert Nazi collaborator whose docility led it to wealth through stashing war gelt in Swiss banks as a foundation for the country's importance as a post war finance center. At the same time when America enters the War the Swiss know they must assert their neuterality or be in a lot of trouble.

But the screenplay adds what seems unnecessary melodrama, as well as seeming to think it's a musical. Turbulent relations happen between Ernst and Gerti: he gets himself into big trouble simply with that. There's a strong hint of the old postwar movie Nazi in August, who turns out to be "Gustav" at home. His relationship with Ernst is actually maybe more lurid than the postwar movie Nazis were. Ultimately instead of depicting simply a naive, morally clueless boy, this film spins a lurid tale of complications, and then does the austere, tragic death row thing at the end, when Ernst has only alienated his father more and gotten his childhood buddy Max in trouble. As a Letterboxd comment says of this whole film, "it packs too much in."

One version of Schrämli's story is that he was an egregious case, a young man who had nothing but bad luck his whole life. Tostart with, he was the ohly one of eight children put in an orphanage. Till the end, the thing he wants most is to be able to go back to his father and be accepted by him, which never happens. The trouble is that while newcomer Krebs has plenty of presence and a freshness and eagerness of his own, his character is little more than a tall, unruly waif, full of needs but a sort of blank. The screenplay needed to provide more specific background on his life and personality. In a Variety interview with the filmmaker he says he gained access to not only court and legal documents but efen many of Schrämli’s personal letters, and that they offered "deep insights into his highly sensitive soul." Maybe those insights proved hard to convey in scenes in the film. Apparently the officer who was Ernst's sponsor composed a request for clemency for him and he refused to sign it. All he wanted was for his father to come and see him. Maybe his acts of treason were impulsive and foolish, but they seem too egregious to be forgiven, particularly in a soldier.

There was a 1976 film by Richard Dindo, The Shooting of the Traitor Ernst S., which some say is superior to this ambitious, but in some ways sketchy new film. Dindo, who was born in 1944, just died last month. He also made films about the Swiss who fought in the Spanish Civil War; about Genet at Chatila; and about Ernesto Che Guevara.

The Traitor/Landesverrätter, 116 min. debuted Oct. 5, 2024 at Zurich, where Dmitri Krebs shared the Best Actor Award with David Constantin for Tschugger - The Lätscht case. It was also shown at Solothurn and Locarno. Screened for this review as part of Berlin & Beyond 2025 in San Francisco.

Showtime: Roxie, SF – March 29 at 1:45 PM . (SWISS FILM & TALKS)