In the opening scene, the camera pans across a mountainous landscape of ancient Greek ruins. Zarah Leander is singing “Der Wind hat mir ein Lied Erzählt” (The wind told me a song) the title song of Detlev Sierck’s melodrama LA HABANERA (1937). German soldiers are making a film based on Sophocles’ tragedy “Oedipus the King” in occupied Greece. A senior lance-corporal, a photographer by trade, is behind the camera. The Captain directs the film and his German colleagues are all soldiers from his troop, amateurs who have to painstakingly work their way into the story. A freed prisoner plays the protagonist. He knows next to nothing about the tragedy or its significance, but begins to analyse the character of Oedipus and to take him increasingly seriously. The army captain entrusts the roles of Jocasta and Creon to Greek actors. Countless local extras are also involved in the project. Aside from the importunities of the field sergeant, the filming continues largely undisturbed. The war does not seem to bother them, and even the partisans’ gunshots are so distant that the Captain can keep working on his project in peace. The young protagonist evidently identifies more and more with his character, defending Oedipus against his guilt: “But there’s no way I can be guilty!” Later, he tries to claim mitigating circumstances, as he had no way of knowing that the man he killed was his father. Increasingly, the soldiers’ own circumstances intersect with the motives of the tragedy being filmed. The actor playing Oedipus looks on jealously as the Captain sleeps with “Jocasta”. And the actor playing Creon disappears. The film crew who go searching for him find civilians shot down by the Wehrmacht. Up in the mountains, filming continues regardless, when the message arrives that the partisans have raided the German military camp. The captain takes three of the Greek actors hostage and has them walk ahead of him back towards base along a likely mine-laden mountain path. They attempt to escape, but the field sergeant is the first to shoot, followed by the actor who plays Oedipus. He hits Jocasta. The Captain commits suicide with his service weapon. The film crew comes under fire, “Oedipus” is hit. What follows is a shot from the film within the film: a child guides the blind prophet Tiresias.
“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly,” said Theodor W. Adorno. This sentence could serve as the all-important key to the otherwise rather impenetrable film THE CASE OF OEDIPUS. The nameless and well-educated captain, like all the other men in uniform, s recognised not by name but by military ranking. “His soul still seeking for the land of Greece,” he suppresses the German occupation from his consciousness. Not for a moment in this film does he even begin to critically reflect on the war and the Nazi regime. At one point, his cameraman conjectures that the film is merely an alibi, so to speak, which the Captain can use to prove his own innocence when the war is lost. Even this may be giving the Captain too much credit. He entirely suppresses reality, in favour of this ancient myth. And his belief in his own innocence, as expressed by the actor playing Oedipus, whilst others blame the gods, is a welcome madness. The Captain, who evidently wields some kind of power over the Greek men, refuses to enter into conversation about the situation of his Greek actors. In the end, the members of the German army behave as soldiers, shooting at civilians, even though they have not engaged in combat up until this point. All their ambitious, cultural efforts have come to nothing. Perhaps this, too, is itself a tragedy, raising questions about the individual guilt of those involved.
