Fans of director Robert Siodmak’s American noirs will be either fascinated or disappointed by his later German work, especially Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam (US: The Devil Strikes at Night), which pares down the auteur’s famously expressionistic cinematography but ramps up the thematic weightiness. In the final few months of the second world war (“Excuse the rubble”), police inspector Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) investigates the murder of a trashy barmaid whose freshly strangled body is discovered in front of her married boyfriend; Kersten looks past the circumstantial evidence (the boyfriend pleads innocence) and begins to connect the incident with similar murders from the past decade. As Kersten doggedly pursues the case, the SS becomes concerned that exposure of a serial killer’s decade-long murder spree would undermine respect for the party, so they seek to hasten the boyfriend’s execution. Nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign language film, the film’s political ironies are abundant: Kersten refers to the killer (not Hitler) as “the century’s biggest monster”; a German policeman tries desperately to prevent the unjust execution of one man while his government is unjustly slaughtering millions across the continent, etc. The early murder scene in the midst of an Allied air strike is gripping and beautifully shot, while Bruno’s crime re-enactment in the countryside — and its discordant musical accompaniment — feels like satire, which perhaps is perfectly appropriate.