A film straight out of the harsh yet alluring no man’s land between grindhouse and underground, art and colportage. If this would have come from an American or even Italian genre-auteur, it would still be a lauded classic and one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films. In Germany this genre of cinema never had it easy and Mädchen… nur mit Gewalt is even today waiting for the recognition that it truly is a masterpiece and a milestone for German post-war cinema.
At first glance the two friends Mike and Werner, played by Arthur Brauss and Klaus Löwitsch, seem plain and normal. Both are in their 30s and have achieved small success as office clerks. Underneath this petty bourgeois existence they hide vicious secrets: When the office closes the become predators and hunt for girls. Tonight they are out for innocent student Alice (Helga Anders). They lure her to a lonely lake and soon their “games” take a turn for the violent. Like Roland Klick’s Deadlock, Fritz’s anti-fairytale is pure existentialism: A void world gives birth to nothing but violence. –Oldenburg Film Festival