Word: kautner
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Against the backdrop of Paris, where people seem more interesting anyway, the superb German film Mon Petit tells a love story--"sometimes funny, sometimes sad"--which is consistently wonderful to watch. From the moment director Helmut Kautner appears to introduce his audience to "out boy and girl" until he walks down the boulevard at the end, his masterful hand changes ordinary into unique, ennui into comedy, sex into lyricism, and Paris into the colors of Cezanne...
Director Helmut Kautner's point is that loneliness and pride make communication well-nigh impossible between people. The seventeen-year-old girl feels she must invent rich relatives, fiancees, pipe dreams, in order to be loved, and these lies set up a terrible barrier between herself and the boy who would love her. He feels too proud to marry a rich girl when he is too poor to support even himself and a duck. Similarly, the married woman thinks she has to go on sleeping with her husband and her other lover so Jacques--soft, revolting Jacques--won't lose...
While Mon Petit may play with reality, the audience remains aware that this is fiction, even surrealistic fiction. To heighten this effect, Kautner limits his palette so that orange (the oranges), black (the sophisticates), white (our boy and girl), and grey (the edifices of Paris) predominate. And, of course, the characters seem too attractive to be realistic. Horst Bucholz especially stands out as a sort of Jimmy Dean for the quality trade...
Director Helmut Kautner has taken Karl Zuchmayer's biting leftist script and toned it down, both in political implication and in social description. As the movie proceeds one can see the effect which could have resulted from the blending of abject misery with bitter humor. There are flashes of what must have been really fine pathos on older, flickering, brownish black-and-white film. Blind street singers grind out a Weill-ish ballad, one playing a hand organ, the other tapping a drum with sticks taped to his elbows. A dying consumptive girl cries out in fear of the whiteness...
Outside of the latter rather sticky item, The Captain From Koepenick is highly entertaining, and in a few of the comic scenes, positively brilliant. Helmut Kautner's comic direction is perceptive and lightning fast. His sausage-filled officials are overdone perfectly, and his other minor characters dodge in and out of the story with potent effect. And of course, throughout, there is Heinz Ruhmann's performance, which alone makes The Captain From Koepenick eminently worth seeing...