Wolf-Eckhart Bühler writes about Thome’s Munich films in 1971: «Might be that one has to be a certain age, live in Munich, enjoy cinema, have a desire to make films, like pretty girls and smoke Gitanes». Munich seems to be the center of the world – or at least one is under this impression when (re)watching the early films by Rudolf Thome. Coolness rules the whole generation. Much of it is purely superficial – because it only takes dark sunglasses, stylish cars, girls in miniskirts and a few guns as daring accessories.
Norbert Grob puts it nicely: «Two men and one woman: They are two private detectives and their secretary. Like any other small business they have one thing: an office. In this office there is a desk that nobody uses, a small portable typewriter that nobody writes with, and a filing cabinet with nothing in it. Later, a moving company empties the entire office because they couldn’t pay the last installments. Thus the three of them begin to pursue other activities … It’s a matter of money, murder and kidnapping, of love and death, and of complicated emotions. Detektive is about cinema, that is to say: about life.»
