Robert Siodmak’s first German film after his brilliant career in the United States, Die Ratten (US: The Rats) stars Maria Schell as Pauline Karka, an indigent German woman, pregnant and alone, who receives shelter from sympathetic laundry owner Anna John (Heidemarie Hatheyer). Anna is infertile but wealthy, so Pauline is soon persuaded to allow Anna to raise the baby as her own so it can have a life of greater opportunity and privilege. Understandably, Pauline later has regrets, which set her on a tragic path toward kidnapping and even murder. Curd Jürgens plays Anna’s volatile brother Bruno, whose feelings toward Pauline run the gamut but culminate in rage, while Schell expresses desperation on her face as well as Siodmak paints desperation with his camera. Perhaps the film’s most beautiful sequence is the birth of Pauline’s baby, during which the camera floats and pans ever so slowly through the warehouse, past statuary and mannequins, rays of wayward light peering out from the shadows, Bruno’s cigarette smoke rising, Pauline’s faint moans audible in the distance, the score’s heavy strings sighing out chords.