Alfred Vohrer’s Ein Alibi zerbricht (US: An Alibi for Death) opens with a first act that dives deep into the noir palette, thick fog swirling around a truck as it barrels down a country road one night, the driver slamming on the brakes when a lifeless body is suddenly thrown in front of his path, Bach’s ominous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor playing on the radio as the driver gets out to inspect the situation, shot from low angles with bursts of distant light penetrating through the fog. The trucker, Martin Siebeck (Michael Janisch), is arrested for murder but successfully defended by attorney Maria Rohn (Ruth Leuwerik), especially after the victim is identified as a civil engineer named Kessler who had provably died earlier in the day. During the case, however, a new, more personal wrinkle emerges: having found the name Kessler written in his notes before she had even mentioned it, Maria begins to suspect that her husband, construction executive Günther (the always villainous Peter van Eyck), was somehow involved with the victim. She’ll soon learn that the net is even wider, involving her husband’s closest business associates, Leopold Wasneck (Sieghardt Rupp) and Dr. Hartleben (Charles Regnier), and that the secrets involved may be serious enough to get her killed. Hannelore Elsner plays Leopold’s wife Hanne, whose friendship with Maria ends up taking a very dark turn. In fact, the whole film takes a dark turn once Günther’s silhouette appears menacingly in the door to the bedroom as Maria calls the police, the tension accelerated until a final showdown, handgun to handgun, at Günther’s latest building site. Vohrer and cinematographer Behn-Grund keep the camera moving (note the shot panning back, around, and down the other side of the prison bars during Maria’s initial meeting with Siebeck) and close the film with another bath in noir visual style.