Die Delegation (1970)
IMDb meta-data is a runtime 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 7.5 by 131 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: UFO.
DNA: West Germany.
Verdict: Imaginative.
Tagline: Move over Orson Wells.
In this mockumentary Intrepid, a television journalist, during a routine story gets drawn into a tale of UFOs. Shifting through the nutcases he finds some of the witnesses credible, the real evidence, though sparse, is intriguing. He follows the threads around the world, losing his job but not his camera and sound man, in so doing. The visas in his passport are many: Canada (where it started), USA, Peru, Italy, and so many more I lost track.
Intrepid tries everything to disprove the evidence he keeps finding, to no avail. He has one Canadian witness tested by psychologists, brain scans, and hypnosis but she continues to offer a low key but consistent account of meeting the titular delegation. He follows asides and descriptions in her recitations to find other clues. Project Blue Book gets a look-in. One clue leads to another, and so on. He is Indiana Jones in a suit and tie with a microphone.
Intrepid is dead when the story starts, that is disappeared and presumed dead, incinerated in a car crash. The movie is pieced together from the footage he had shot on his investigations. Much of it is cinéma vérité style from the field, because there are the mandatory crop circles.
It is all played dead straight, none of the nods and winks so unnecessary and so common in Hollywood productions. The commitment of the players to their parts is complete, and there are a lot of them. Ergo this was not a cheap production. Moreover, the travelogue must have been pricey.
It is steadfastly measured with cross cuts to the journalist sitting at a desk who found Intrepid’s footage and has assembled it. He is matter of fact about it all and leaves it to the viewer to decide. There is no world-ending hysteria. (I was reminded of the way German television reported on the 1999 East Timor crisis: cool and methodical, in vivid contrast to the feverish, panicked, judgemental reporting of the ABC.)
Some German viewers mistakenly thought this TV film was a factual report, hence the reference to the Wunderkind above, and not a drama. Today many viewers make the same mistake in taking Pox News for factual.
By the way the Canadian encounter took place near Sudbury, which is where I had my first teaching appointment with a college of Laurentian University.