This film propagates "Imagination", unfortunately it is sorely lacking in that very department. (Well, no surprise really, this being Germany...)
A goat child is being kidnapped; an old geezer is riding the waves in the brook behind the house; yes, the obtrusive revolver will be fired in the end (no, it won't, it will just trigger another gun); and in a police station Uschi will do her famous chaste striptease down to her white corsage underwear (might be a straight jacket or an armour). No sex in 1968. Not until the lecherous old geezer performs his homemade sea shanty to the bass section accompaniment of an accordion will we receive the present of a moment. A moment of presence.
Have you noticed that the boys in the films of that period are all useless dawdlers, dilly-dallying and niggling, wasting their days with tepid pranks and vapid one-liners? The girls on the other hand are always good girls, they have parents, some education, an orderly life and plans for more of the same. If boy and girl get together she'll provide the livelihood and he'll provide the amusement. (If you wanna call a flip book "amusement", that is. I do.) Now, despite being ineffective weaklings (I almost read "wankers"), these boys seem to exert an irresistible spell on the females, who gladly take the opportunity for a diversion on any sunny afternoon. "Oh well, alright", the girls say, handing over their cars and nearly throwing away their lives. (Yet they won't forget their orderly background which they will eventually return to.)
Where the Graduate still had a direction, a vector - out, out of the parental housing - and this direction of impact (expact?) drove the film, Martin here is already released from all enclosures of discipline, discharged and free to drift aimlessly through the 80 minutes of Schätzchen.
80 minutes that made me check my watch repeatedly. Tedious? Yes. Free-wheeling? light hearted? Well, yes, insofar as this film, much like it's main protagonist, finds no footing in the real, wasting it's time with lame japes and half-baked caricatures set in a nondescript town (Munich? It could be any place), randomly breezing by, without a chance to touch us. (And the "Imagination"? That has been driven out of the country /murdered 30 years before.)
The main impression Schätzchen leaves behind is that of a lukewarm reproduction of it's French and British influences, trying too hard to evoke the sparkles and the wit of it's predecessors and coming away with something a bit unimaginative and "bieder"... a German film.
I graciously give it 5 Stars for being a historical document. (And for drawing the dawdling boys less abrasive than in the other films of the period - that indeed was a welcome variation of the theme.)
A goat child is being kidnapped; an old geezer is riding the waves in the brook behind the house; yes, the obtrusive revolver will be fired in the end (no, it won't, it will just trigger another gun); and in a police station Uschi will do her famous chaste striptease down to her white corsage underwear (might be a straight jacket or an armour). No sex in 1968. Not until the lecherous old geezer performs his homemade sea shanty to the bass section accompaniment of an accordion will we receive the present of a moment. A moment of presence.
Have you noticed that the boys in the films of that period are all useless dawdlers, dilly-dallying and niggling, wasting their days with tepid pranks and vapid one-liners? The girls on the other hand are always good girls, they have parents, some education, an orderly life and plans for more of the same. If boy and girl get together she'll provide the livelihood and he'll provide the amusement. (If you wanna call a flip book "amusement", that is. I do.) Now, despite being ineffective weaklings (I almost read "wankers"), these boys seem to exert an irresistible spell on the females, who gladly take the opportunity for a diversion on any sunny afternoon. "Oh well, alright", the girls say, handing over their cars and nearly throwing away their lives. (Yet they won't forget their orderly background which they will eventually return to.)
Where the Graduate still had a direction, a vector - out, out of the parental housing - and this direction of impact (expact?) drove the film, Martin here is already released from all enclosures of discipline, discharged and free to drift aimlessly through the 80 minutes of Schätzchen.
80 minutes that made me check my watch repeatedly. Tedious? Yes. Free-wheeling? light hearted? Well, yes, insofar as this film, much like it's main protagonist, finds no footing in the real, wasting it's time with lame japes and half-baked caricatures set in a nondescript town (Munich? It could be any place), randomly breezing by, without a chance to touch us. (And the "Imagination"? That has been driven out of the country /murdered 30 years before.)
The main impression Schätzchen leaves behind is that of a lukewarm reproduction of it's French and British influences, trying too hard to evoke the sparkles and the wit of it's predecessors and coming away with something a bit unimaginative and "bieder"... a German film.
I graciously give it 5 Stars for being a historical document. (And for drawing the dawdling boys less abrasive than in the other films of the period - that indeed was a welcome variation of the theme.)