If all goes according to plan, as from May 4 film theatres will be allowed to reopen in Portugal. Attendance will be limited to every other row with 3 seats distance between viewers, parties presumably excepted. April 2020 may be the first month in well over a 100 years when no film was shown on a silver screen in a dark room in Lisbon, my native city. April 2020 was the month the movies died. Well, true to form, they shall resurrect. Nonetheless, the occasion seems apt for a nocturnal review: Die Endlose Nacht.
Die Endlose Nacht was the 2nd feature film directed by Will Temper, German journalist, writer, screenwriter and sometime director who earned his requisite 15 minutes of notoriety by titling a review of Steven Spielberg's “Schindler's List” “Indiana Jones im Ghetto von Krakau”.
Die Endlose Nacht takes place at Tempelhof Airport – which connected West Berlin to West Germany during the Wall years (1961-1989, decommissioned 2008) – during a night when foggy weather interrupted air traffic, leaving several passengers from diverse walks of life and matters to attend to stranded overnight, to typically Berliner deadpan caustic comic effect.
The film deambulates through the several unrelated characters and subplots, the main character being the airport itself, arguably the most beautiful building in Berlin and one of the world's most beautiful airports, filmed in glorious black and white by Hans Jura, Austrian photographer of whom I had never heard before.
Aside, in my case, personal nostalgia, Die Endlose Nacht's main interest for contemporary viewers may be to bring across how different and yet similar the airport experience was almost 60 years ago: a place with no sense of place, as hasty meals, brief encounters, elusive stares and, occasionally, reequated options, fly by.