January Meme: Fun/Comedy German Movies
Jan. 9th, 2016 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakcadma is learning German but, having apparantly only been shown sad and depressing German movies, asked me for comedy/fun ones in order to practice. Contrary to our image, these do exist. Some even exist on Youtube, subtitled. Here are some favourites, in order of production, and then some addendums who aren’t what I’d rec as movies for beginners but which are of interest to Erich Kästner fans, of which I am one. But first, the favourites for the enterprising discoverer of funny and fun German movies: - “Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war” (1937): „The Man who was Sherlock Holmes“ teams up Hans Albers and Heinz Rühman as two luckless detectives without clients who decide to change their luck by impersonating Holmes & Watson. This works amazingly well, especially since they never actually claim to be Holmes & Watson; on the contrary, they deny it (while being dressed like Strand magazine illustrations), and everyone is convinced. Albers (image-wise, think Robert Mitchum crossed with Steve McQueen) and Rühman (think Jack Lemmon) were one of those actor combinations who couldn’t stand each other in rl but were magic on the screen together, and here they get to play basically two roles each, Morris and Mackie and Holmes & Watson as impersonated by Morris and Mackie. They also get to sing (musicals were popular in 30s German cinema), and one of the songs, “Jawoll, meine Herren” became an evergreen. (It’s a fiendish earworm which I’m humming right now.) The case they solve involves a (forged) St. Maurice stamp and some dastardly villains, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes a cameo appearance at the end, saving our heroes’ butts from a lawsuit. Definitely fun. Check here a complete version, and here is one with English subtitles broken up in several parts.
- “Münchhausen” (1943): the third German movie ever to be produced in color, to celebrate the UFA’s 25th anniversary. Goebbels wanted the German movie industry to show off, big time, create something that could compete with Hollywood, and to that end he even okay’d the fact the script was written by Erich Kästner, whose works were not allowed to be published in Germany since 1933. (Except for “Emil and the Detectives”, which was the most popular German children’s book ever, and even Emil landed on the index in 1937.) In 1933, Kästner had been the only author of one of the books burned at the infamous book burnings who actually witnessed this autodafé of his works and German culture in person. (And was recognized, but not attacked, thankfully.) Kästner wrote the script for Münchhausen under the pseudonym “Berthold Bürger” (“Berthold Citizen”), and the press was under strict instructions not to mention the scriptwriter in a single review. They didn’t. They loved the movie, though, and no wonder. It’s still a beloved classic, and was the reason why, when Terry Gilliam’s Münchhausen hit the cinemas over here, our critics basically shrugged and said “eh”. Münchhausen” the 1943 movie has a framing narration, which starts with a fake-out: you think your’re witnessing a 18th century ball, then it’s revealed it’s actually a present day costume party, and then the supposed descendant of the legendary Baron Münchhausen tells his story to a young couple who both have a thing for him. (Meanwhile, his wife, who looks visibly older than he is, is amused.) Cue main part of the movie, in which Münchhausen (played in present and past by Hans Albers again – he basically was the male sex idol of the German screen at that time) loves the ladies and enjoys life while some loosely connected anecdotes about him happen and he runs into fellow adventurers like Cagliostro (who ends up giving our hero immortality) and Casanova. One of his most sizzling affairs is with the Czarina Catherine the Great, played by Brigitte Horney. Note that it was 1943, Germany was at war with Russia (well, with almost everyone, but definitely with Russia), but Russia wasn’t presented negatively in this movie at all. Nor was Catherine. (Though you could argue from a propaganda pov that she was German, but still.) Who is presented as enjoying her share of lovers, but ruling on her lonesome and having fun doing so. The movie’s special effects like the famous ride on a canon ball still hold up pretty well, and the trip to the moon is just damn charming. At the end, we catch up with the present day Münchhausen again, who is, you guessed it, none other than the original, immortal Münchhausen. (Who says Cagliostro was a conman?) Shezan once asked me whether the fact that nobody in the present day segments says “Heil Hitler” was due to Kästner being subversive. It wasn’t. In 98 % of German movies produced between 1933-1945, nobody is running around in SA or SS uniform, and nobody is saying Heil Hitler. They all seem to take place in a parallel universe. This was because early flops at the box office in 1933 had taught Goebbels that people wanted their escapism escapist. Anyway, you can read a message, if you like, in Münchhausen explicitly rejecting power and as a fun-loving bonvivant hardly conforming to the NationalSocialist ideal, and in the lack of vilifications for the Russians, but basically this is apolitical entertainment. You can watch it, with subtitles in English, here
- “Unter den Brücken” (Under the Bridges) (1945), directed by Helmut Käutner. This movie is a small miracle. It was shot from April to October 1944 around Berlin and Potsdam, and in the region called the Havelland. At that point, there weren’t that many bridges still standing, because of the bombings, but in the movie, which is about two Havel boatmen and the woman they fall in love with, and set mostly on their ship, you wouldn’t know it. (See above re: parallel universe.) This is one triangle story which ends the fanfiction way: the three end up with each other, on their ship. How did this one pass the censor’s office, you may ask? It didn’t. It was still there when the point became academic, because by the spring of 1945, there weren’t any cinemas left to show any movies. (“Unter den Brücken” was one of the last UFA productions.) It finally got released in 1946, before West and East Germany were established as states and their censorship had kicked in, and the Allies’ censorship didn’t care since there was no propaganda whatsoever in this movie. Stylistically, it’s basically poetic realism, a simple story around three characters, totally unpretentious (and made with a minimal budget), full of kindness and friendship. The actors were well known UFA stars (Carl Raddatz as Hendrik, Gustav Knuth as Willy, Hannelore Schroth as Anna), but they ditched the UFA mannerism and wardrobe for this one. Not a bundle of laughs type of film, though you will chuckle a few times, but very enjoyable and lovable and anti-depressing. (Alas, the only version on Youtube is cropped and hence not watchable. You’ll have to look for the DVD.)
- “Der Untertan” (1951), directed by Wolfgang Staudte, based on the novel by Heinrich Mann: Speaking of post war censorship, this movie was made by the DEFA (East German UFA successor), and includes a very pointed dig at the very end, which is why it wasn’t allowed to be shown in West Germany until twenty years later. Yes, you read that correctly, not the other way around. Heinrich (older brother of Thomas) Mann’s novel had been a sharp satire on Wilhelmian Germany published in 1914 – well, starting to be published, and then the first World War meant it could not be distributed anymore until 1918, when it became a bestseller. No British caricature ever satirized the Emperor-worship, the authority obedience, the military cult and just about everything as sharply and astutely (because it was from the inside) as Heinrich Mann did with that novel, and Staudte’s movie, shot a generation later, is just as good (and vicious). (And funny.) And yes, Staudte did not intend a nostalgia exercise but wanted to make a direct connection to where two World Wars had come from. Like the novel, the film ends with a gigantic thunderstorm, but in the movie the thunder changes into the fanfare of the Nazi news serials (which the audience in 1951 would have immediately identified), and we fade from Wilhelmian Germany into the rubble of bombed out Germany in 1951. The conservative West German press was incensed and called Staudte a “deluded pacifist” making Communist propaganda. Like I said, the movie couldn’t be shown in West Germany uncut (i.e. with the final scene) until 1971. (!) Today, it’s regarded as one of the masterpieces of post war German cinema. (And there aren’t that many, ahem.) (The next movie is another one, though.) It’s not online in its entirety. But here’s that famous final scene. The protagonist, Diederich Heßling, is holdling a speech full of Wilhelmian megalomaniac rethoric as he dedicates a statue of the Emperor when the storm breaks loose, as you can see here.
- “Wir Wunderkinder” (“Aren’t we wonderful?”) (1958), directed by Kurt Hofmann. I already devoted an entire post to this one here, when the dvd got released, and I love it to bits. The short version of why: it’s witty, charming and combines sharp satire with deep humanism, and it’s one of the very few 1950s West German movies to tackle both the Third Reich and the immediate post war present. For a detailed description, praise and two excerpts, see link to post. You can watch the entire movie on Youtube here.
- Männer (“Men”) (1985), directed by Doris Dörrie. This was Dörrie’s breakout movie, which made her for a time a household name in Germany. It’s a comedy where Julius, standard successful and ambitious businessman who cheats on his wife with his secretary, suddenly discovers his wife Paula is also having an affair, with a man, Stefan, who is his total opposite: an artist without ambition or money living an alternative life style. This discovery galvanizes Julius into a campaign to win his wife back, and his cunning plan is to move into Stefan’s shared apartment of hippies under the alias of Daniel and change him into everything Paula is disliking about Julius, thereby removing the competition. He hasn’t counted on actually befriending Stefan, however…. If the movie doesn’t end in explicit Julius/Stefan, it very nearly does (Paula finds them near naked in their last scene, after Stefan has discovered “Daniel’s” real identity), and Heiner Lauterbach (Julius) and Uwe Ochsenknecht (Stefan) have a blast thoughout. As does the audience. I don’t think it’s online, but it’s certainly out there on dvd.
- Schtonk! (“Schtonk!) (1992), directed by Helmut Dietl. Speaking of the 80s, does anyone remember the faked Hitler diaries? ‘Twas a mighty scandal, because one of our more (then) prestitious magazines, STERN, actually published them as the genuine article in 1983, and there were a few historians who bought into them, but a serious investigation quickly revealed them as the fraud they were. (Stern Magazine never quite recovered.) The late (as of 2015, very recent) Helmut Dietl filmed the story as a satiric comedy with fictional names but otherwise pretty authentic (a lot of quotes were used), and from the pov of the forger (real name Kujau, movie name Knobel), played by Uwe Ochsenknecht. (The title, btw, is a nonsense word from Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”.) Götz George plays the reporter Hermann Willié (real name Gerd Heidemann, who must have more of a sense of humor than his fictional counterpart, because he has a cameo appearance in this movie which makes relentless fun of him) who bought the diaries in both senses of the word and has a not so hidden Nazi fetish, and the rest of the cast are Dietl stalwarts (Helmut Dietl was most famous for Munich-centred satire and comedy on tv and the big screen both). Schtonk! got a nomination for best foreign movie at the Oscars but didn’t win. It’s still getting quoted; especially Hitler’s fake diary entries. (“…and Eva says I have bad breath.”)
- Goodbye, Lenin! (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker. To continue the “fake” and “Germany in the 80s” theme: the comedy that put Daniel Brühl on the cinematic landscape as the good son who in order to save his mother, who fell into a coma before the wall went down, from another heart attack when she wakes up by faking the GDR’s continued existence to her. It was accused of Ostalgie and downplaying the sinister sides of life in the GDR, but really, if you want a movie that deals with those, you watch The Lives of Others. This here is a comedy and more concerned with our national penchant of preferring illusion over awful truths at first anyway. Plus Brühl is v. v. charming.
-Das Wunder von Bern („The Miracle of Bern“) (2003), directed by Sönke Wortmann. (Who later also directed the movie about the 2006 world cup.) Set in Germany in 1954, it has two intertwined plots; a family story from the pov of the youngest son (the father is a Spätheimkehrer, one of the last bunch of POWs released by the Russians, and thus both a nervous wreck and completely estranged from his family), and Germany against all expectations winning its first post WWII world cup. I’m not a football/soccer fan, and thus not a natural target audience, so you may take my word that this movie is magical for non-sports fen alike (and makes you yell “Tooooooor!” at the appropriate moment). It’s both comedy and character drama (Peter Lohmeyer gives a great performance as Richard, the father, to whom the country he returns to is just as alien as his family who has created a good life without him; when he finally manages to connect, it’s not because the old roles have been reestablished but because he managed to find a new one.) (And because of his son’s passion for football and die Mannschaft.) As for the comedy, some of the most hilarious moments are due to Sönke Wortmann using the voice of the original reporter commentary from 1954, and the vocabulary then was both earnest, old fashioned and divinely over the top (“Du bist ein Fußballgott!”). In conclusion: Tooooooooor! (Have the trailer here.) (There’s a musical based on this movie now, that’s how much the nation adored it.)
Now for the addendum movies. Not recommended for beginners, but of historic interest and not without charm:
- “Emil und die Detektive” ("Emil and the Detectives") (1931): the first of eight movie versions of Erich Kästner’s 1929 novel, this one was scripted by one Billie (sic) Wilder, who went places overseas, I hear. (Yes, he still spelled himself “Billie” back then, not knowing that this was the female version of the name. It boggles the mind to think of a time when Billy Wilder didn’t speak a word of English, but there was one.) Here’s why, despite the Kästner-Wilder combination, I did not put this on the main list: first of all, the sound. This was an early, early sound movie, and you can tell. The dvd edition tried to clear up the sound, but it’s still tough for non-Germans to understand (and occasionally for Germans). Secondly, you can also tell this was an early sound movie by the way it’s constructed; very much still using the conventions of silent cinema (the opening sequence, for example, is entirely free of spoken words or human noises, it’s all music), and while it was fast paced then, it comes across as leisurely paced now. All this being said, I find it adorable. Director Gerhard Lamprecht had to work mainly with a bunch of kids without any acting experience, and he got good performances out of them, and historically speaking, it’s fascinating to see actual footage of Weimar Republic era Berlin, before both Nazis and bombs. And while later adaptions struggle to translate why the 140 Marks that get stolen from Emil are a big deal, or why his mother doesn’t send them via mail, it’s entirely understandable in depression era Germany. On a more sober note, most of the children you see in this film later died in WW II as Hitler’s cannon fodder. Käthe Haak, who plays Emil’s mother, went on to become a UFA star and survived. The movie was a hit and was still (re)running in German cinemas as late as 1937, when Billy Wilder had saved his life by emigrating to Hollywood and Erich Kästner had watched his novels burn and was forbidden to work (officially, see also: Münchhausen).
- Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944): still one of the most popular German comedies of all times, endlessly rerun on tv, starring Heinz Rühmann. (Set in a parallel reality, see above. War? What war?) The plot: Writer Johannes Pfeiffer, who was homeschooled, is envious of everyone in his club telling great anecdotes about their time at school. On an alcohol-fired dare, he decides to impersonate a grammar school boy from the graduating class in a provincial town and proceeds to do just that, as Hans Pfeiffer (“Pfeiffer with three f, Professor”). Cue any number of pranks. (These scenes all play with a certain tradition of German school stories, which I’m not sure would work as amusingly if you’re not familiar with them, which is why this movie didn’t make the main list.) Not a problem then but one now, due to age difference: Pfeiffer falls in love with the 17 years old director’s daughter. (He does tell her the truth, but she doesn’t believe him until the final denouement.) Anyway, it’s funny and very quotable, but also very dependent on cultural context.
- Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), script by Erich Kästner, based on his 1949 novel of the same title, directed by Josef von Baky who also directed “Münchhausen”, see above. This one will be instantly recognizable, plot wise, because the Mouse got its paws on it and made an American remake called “The Parent Trap”, which, I hear, got endlessly recycled. ( I’m still not over that. Disney can have everything but Kästner.) Yes, it’s the story of twins who meet, realize they’re twins though their divorced parents have kept this from them, decide to impersonate each other, and end up bringing their parents back together. It’s one of the stories that were in their own contemporary context progressive and now look just the opposite. Obvious problems from today’s perspective: the assumption that nine divorced years can just be easily overcome, the way in which the father’s fiancée is THE ENEMY. But this was the first German post war children’s book which dealt with divorce, until then a taboo subject in books written for children. The mother being a journalist, a single working woman, was also relatively unusual (I hear in the US version she’s a jobless Boston society woman? NOT THE SAME), as was the fault of the original divorce being given to the father. Unusual for Kästner: both child heroes are girls, not a single boy in sight. The 1950 movie includes Kästner, at that point the post war nation’s favourite storytelling uncle, as narrator, first on screen speaking to the audience and then off screen narrating. You can call the narration overdoing it, but he was one of the few authors to have a GREAT voice for reading; I heard it first on a record (of “Das doppelte Lottchen”, as it happens) as a small child and remember how trustworthy and soothing I found it. The twins playing Luise and Lotte, Isa and Jutta Günther, did a few more films later but withdrew from acting at age 20; they’re both alive and as far as I know well. Here, they’re very endearing, and the movie, which was filmed in Munich and the Bavarian mountains, gives a cameo to the legendary Bavarian comedien Liesl Karlstadt. I like it, but I wouldn’t call it a must, hence it not being on the main list.
The other days
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Date: 2016-01-09 04:38 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2016-01-10 02:11 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 2016-01-09 07:49 pm (UTC)I always felt the criticism of "Goodbye Lenin" was unfair; it's reasonably obvious that Alex has been oblivious to lots of things. or rather that his mother has protected him from them - it's a parallel to the way he tries to protect her, later. (A variation on the old saying about history happening once as tragedy and repeating itself as farce?). Whereas I think "Sonnenallee" did deserve that criticism, although it's a less good film in any case.
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Date: 2016-01-10 07:20 am (UTC)Youtube is doing rather well with movies starring Heinz Rühmann, so you can watch a few post "Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war", if you like.
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Date: 2016-01-09 08:37 pm (UTC)ETA: So maybe you could accuse the movie of melancholy over lost socialist ideals?
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Date: 2016-01-10 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 11:10 pm (UTC)I agree that the Ostalgie criticism of ‘Goodbye Lenin!’ is unfair – we see Alex’s mother being harassed by the Stasi while her husband is in the West, and Alex being beaten up at the protest and then released because of who his mother is. And it turns out that even Christiane who seemed like the ideal citizen would have left if she hadn’t been too afraid. Obviously I can’t judge how accurate the balance of good and bad is but it came across as realistic and quite complex – like Christiane’s idealised version of the DDR might be an illusion, but it’s still important to the characters and they can get something valuable from it? It is a really good film.
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