Although the basic story of the HD-Soldat Läppli is Jaroslav Hasek's "Schwejk" and had been filmed even with Heinz Rühmann in the main role, it was Alfred Rasser's idea that the cooperative defense against military can be turned into a water-proof Swiss story. Läppli who had already served in an auxiliary troop of the Swiss army before, because of the controversial state of his mind, is fully going through all mental institutions after having shown up at the first day of the "Generalmobilmachung", i.e. the start of the military defense because of sub-acute war-alarm, with a Plumeau, a broom and a shovel "because it is always so dirty in those "soldier-barrackers (!)", Basle-German original: "Wels Immer So Draeckig Isch In Dene Kantenamenter". What happens from this point on, is a series of more or less continuous stories that have brought generations to laugh. Rasser and his troop (with varying actors) have played the play of "HD Läppli" and his other stories thousands of times in TV, cinema, on stage, on LP's and on radio. However, the only available version, expensive but well done (and even sub-titled, but not in English), is by far not the best of the available versions. For the few points of critique that I would like to grab out I refer to a version that I had seen in the early 70ies myself in Rasser's "Theater at the Spalenberg" in Basle (other points of critique could be added): 1. The episode where Corporal Mathys and Läppli walk uphill, is fully unmotivated: Neither is it clear where and why they go. Läppli then disappears, is considered to be dead and reappears - as the alleged German spy "Adalbert Lübke". The whole story is without any coherence to what happened before and later. 2. The end is the most deplorable victim of truncation (why?). We hear towards the end, when Läppli has to leave the stockade, that he makes a meeting with Mathys and Myslin for "6 o'clock after the war in the (restaurant) Mug", but at the end of the movie we see Läppli, Mathys and Myslin at the marriage of Clermont and Alice Brodbeck. The whole scene of the meeting in the "Mug" at the Bläsiring in Basle has been cut out in the present film version. 3. Almost more deplorable: In the stage version, Clermont, Alice, Läppli and his friends are sitting on the round-table, and Clermont and Alice are giving Läppli credit for having initiated their marriage by his chaotic, but in the end almost genial ways of being. Also a shorter dialog with Mathys (who has meanwhile gotten his medical doctor-title) has been fallen off the film version.
