Bernhard Wicki’s Die Brücke (1960) remains, besides Kurt Hoffmann’s Wir Wunderkinder (1958), the one West German production of the 50s with something of an international reputation and ongoing influence. No film about teenagers in wartime doesn’t owe a debt to this (piece of) work. The monumental success at home and abroad offered Wicki the opportunity to raise the enormous budget for a project in many ways much closer to him: Das Wunder des Malachias, a massive fresco detailing the interior corruption of the rampant development of Wirtschaftswunder Deutschland,or the Miracle on the Rhine, from bottom to top, from strip-joint habitués and performers to marketing wizards to the upper reaches of a religious order. Remarkably enough, among all the West German movies of the time talking about religion (of which there are many), this is one of the extremely few that dares to feature (off-screen) a miracle, as in: God does something outrageous. Like all the best works of Wicki, this film is sprawling, episodic, all over the place, animated by unexpected detours and asides, while directorially firm, ultra-controlled, visually monumental—the work of a berserker-artist.