One of the most ambitious TV movies of the 1970s, a West German-French-Italian coproduction, filmed in French and English, that explored the then-trendy topic of UFOs. Initially broadcast on Germany’s ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen) network, THE DELEGATION (DIE DELEGATION; 1970) is a mockumentary that, as directed by the late German TV ace Rainer Erler (FLEISCH), stands as a pioneering example of found footage filmmaking.
The film is structured as an inquest into the death of TV reporter Will Roczinski (Walter Kohut). Purportedly put together by Roczinski’s newsroom colleagues, what we see is an extended compilation of TV footage lensed in his final days, which were spent investigating UFO sightings in Canada and the US. Thus, our German speaking protagonist is forced to interact, haltingly, with numerous English speaking individuals (culture shock being a major theme).
Those individuals include Pentagon officials who staunchly deny that extraterrestrial beings exist, as well as an alleged UFO witness who forcibly ejects Roczinski from his apartment, and several amateur photographers who show him photographs of UFOs and indistinct figures that apparently emerged from them. Most importantly to the investigation is a weird pyramid-shaped doohickie Roczinski has analyzed by scientists, who all agree that it’s extraterrestrial in origin.
As Roczinski grows increasingly obsessive, his superiors elect to cut off his funding. He, however, continues his investigations, which grow increasingly quixotic, and culminate with an extended frolic on a beach in Los Angeles and a trip to Peru. There Roczinski becomes determined to investigate prehistoric alien contact of the type promoted by Erich von Däniken in CHARIOTS OF THE GODS? (1968), leading to an ever-stranger dynamic as Roczinski finds the aliens of his investigation going from theoretical to (it would appear) very literal.
In addition to von Däniken, THE DELEGATION was evidently inspired by John G. Fuller’s UFO-themed “nonfiction” book THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY (1966). It’s no wonder that as a UFO thriller the pic admittedly feels a mite cliched, and it’s not entirely convincing as a TV broadcast (the clumsy handheld camerawork was clearly not accomplished by industry professionals). As a subjective descent into madness, however, it ranks pretty highly, and gets extra points for stretching the 1970s telefilm boundaries.
Various different film formats are utilized, with lenses that grow increasingly distorted as the protagonist loses touch with reality. More than one sequence is documented in photo roman (or still frame) style a la LA JETEE (1962), while musical montages of a type that became popular throughout the remainder of the decade are employed in a dizzying mixture that works far better than it should.
The one major drawback is that the film is incredibly fast paced and dialogue heavy, which, combined with the fact that text denoting names and dates (and, in the most readily available version, French language subtitles) frequently appears near the bottom of the screen, makes viewing a subtitled copy a bit of a chore for non-German speakers.
Vital Statistics
THE DELEGATION (DIE DELEGATION)
Bavaria Film/ Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française/RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana/ Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen
Director/Producer/Screenplay: Rainer Erler
Cinematography: Charly Steinberger
Editing: Jacqueline Hoffmann
Cast: Walter Kohut, Henning Gissel, Hans Häckermann, Horst Naumann, Stephan Orlac