This film came out in August 1930, only 8 months after
Melodie des Herzens (1929), the first German talkie. It was basically an experiment with the new genre. Apparently it was quite well received at the time, but I think today it is of little interest except for film historians or Max Hansen fans.
The title suggests that this should be a parody of German expressionist silent movie
Le Cabinet du docteur Caligari (1920), but it is not. I don't think a Dr. Larifari even occurs in the film. It is a series of short spoof sequences (parodying well known films or cabaret acts or spoofing entire genres) held together by a self-referential framing story. In the first scene, three men sitting in a café spontaneously decide to found a talkie film company to fight their boredom. None of them has any capital, but that is explicitly not an obstacle.
The remainder of the film alternates between scenes based on the three men's ideas of what directing a film company is like, and excerpts from various films that this company might produce. Unfortunately the pacing is rather slow and the humor too low-key by today's standards. For example, the Bavarian singing student scene, which is clearly intended as a parody of comedian Karl Valentin, is so boring that I wouldn't even call it a sketch. The film company interior looks grotesque as in an expressionist film, for example a ridiculously high door. That was probably quite funny at a time when expressionist films had been out of fashion for about 5 years and all the old silent films had become irrelevant anyway. But for us modern viewers, the difference between a black and white talkie from 1930 and a silent film from 1925 is far less dramatic, so the joke falls mostly flat.
The founders of the Trio Film Company, who are also its principal actors (besides being the principal chasers of the company secretary), were three contemporary stars who might have appeared in a Kabarett (political cabaret) together.
Max Hansen was an operetta tenor, Kabarett singer and actor. Born out of wedlock to a Danish actress in Germany, he was technically Danish but grew up in Germany. His father was probably a Hungarian of Jewish descent. Today he is still somewhat known for his excellent pop songs, many of which also exist in later cover versions. (Although the original recordings are much better in my opinion.) One of them, "War'n Sie schon mal in mich verliebt?" (1932), made fun of Adolf Hitler and caused him difficulties that forced him to emigrate.
Paul Morgan was an Austrian actor and comedian of Jewish descent who would later be murdered at Buchenwald.
Carl Jöken was a German tenor and occasional actor.
The Trio-Film GmbH was actually a real film company founded by the three actors in real life, but it never produced another film after this one. I doubt that it was because of a dispute over the secretary. More likely the funding ran out because their first film wasn't such a big hit, after all.
