Supermarché

It was the seventies in West Germany, when the national film industry was nearly completely down. Cinema releases were nearly all produced by a handful of arty-farty 1968-intellectuals who produced and directed boring, unrealistic and completely useless movies (except for some really dull commercial soft sex flicks like the successful "Schulmaedchenreport" series and its slick rip-offs).

In reaction to this situation, some young directors started making films that became famous as the "kleine dreckige Filme" ("small dirty movies") - mainly realistic crime movies and street dramas with topics on terrorism, growing-up, violence, becoming criminal, social criticism and drug abuse, but with a more thrilling edge.

Next to Wolfgang Petersen (who later became a big director with "The Boat", "Outbreak" and "Airforce One") and Hark Bohm, Roland Klick was one of the most promising German directors to make films like that. "Supermarket" (1973) is a very good example - it shows us the story of a young Hamburg criminal who can't bear social security and an all-day working life and tries to escape by robbing a mall together with an alcohol-addicted gangster.

The whole movie is thrilling, but also very depressing - the settings are dirty and mainly show us empty houses, ruins, dark back streets and the illuminated city nights of the Hamburg Reeperbahn. The main actors look really ugly, and the whole atmosphere is very nihilistic - there hardly seems to be a possible way out of this cycle of crime and violence.

The theme song is about suicide and sounds a bit like Robbie Williams' "Angel", and the incidental music was written by "Deutschrockstar" Udo Lindenberg. If you want to take a look at German society in the seventies, check out this dirty little diamond!

BRD GmbH in the 70s, a rancid dark chocolate in coloured paper. The upswing or rather the recovery through the peaceful annexation of the East is still a decade in the future. The film reflects a sad picture of a capitalistically assigned war loser, a white colony, in this part of Germany still with the old fascists on many strings, only in a new uniform, a new orientation. Disillusioned youth, grey everyday life, the brutalisation of society on the advance. The West is the Reeperbahn and Bahnhof Zoo, piss and vomit in the neon light, hookers and junkies on the street opposite, enrichment to/from third world countries on every corner. Hamburg fans watch out, this hole used to be your favourite city.

The actors, with the exception of Michael Degen, act woodenly, but true to life. The camera work is remarkable, a certain Mr Vacano was later behind many a great cinema picture.

A Clockwork Orange without artistic pretensions, but even deeper and much more realistic in the gutter. Not a film for a good mood, more of a self-flagellation.

German-language cinema in the 1970s was not exactly blessed with highlights. The self-financing film industry had finally collapsed. Only the excesses of the sex film wave (SCHULMÄDCHEN-Report / LASS JUCKEN, KUMPEL / LIEBESGRÜSSE AUS DER Lederhose) were successful at the box office. The tax money from the German Federal Film Board (FILMFÖRDERUNGSANSTALT) had to start to take effect gradually. Well, and the auteur filmmakers of the NEW GERMAN FILMS were successful in Cannes and at the Berlinale, but did not meet expectations at the box office.

The only ray of hope is the West German director Roland KLICK, who wanted to make West German genre cinema with a high standard: DEADLOCK (1970) and LIEB Vaterland, MAGST RUHIG SEIN (1976).

SUPERMARKT from 1974 tells the story of the young Willi (Charly WIERZEJEWSKI), who wanders through the Hamburg harbor district of St. Pauli and has to deal with some strange people. For example, there is the prostitute Monika, played by Eva MATTES (Silver Palm 1979 for WOYZECK), with whom Willi absolutely wants to run away. To do this, however, he would first have to get her away from her pimp (Heinz DOMEZ, who would play the lead role in LIEB VATERLAND, MAGST RUHIG SEIN two years later). The journalist Frank (Michael DEGEN) is desperate to help Willi lead an independent life in normal circumstances. But there is also Theo (Walter KOHUT), who wants to turn Willi into a prostitute for wealthy homosexuals (Hans Michael REHBERG), but is also planning a robbery of a money transport. As in a drama, the audience follows young Willi on his descent to ruin, accompanied by the great CELEBRATION, sung by Marius MÜLLER-WESTERNHAGEN. We experience an authentic Hamburg in the 1970s, which is rarely seen in German-language cinema. The great images are by ACADEMY AWARD nominee Jost VACANO, who was nominated for DAS BOOT in 1983. Roland KLICK was quite rightly awarded the GERMAN FILM AWARD for this great milieu study, which in its best moments reminds me of TAXI DRIVER by Martin SCORSESE, which was made just two years later. Walter KOHUT also received the GERMAN FILM AWARD in 1974 for his role as Theo. As husband of Immy SCHELL and thus also brother-in-law of world star Maria SCHELL and ACADEMY AWARD winner Maximilian SCHELL (awarded in 1962 for THE JUDGMENT OF NÜRNBERG), KOHUT was actually a veteran of the defunct West German film industry, but who embodied the bridge to the NEW GERMAN FILM. Michael DEGEN (1928 - 2022) and Witta POHL (1937 - 2011) were to appear together again in front of the camera from 1987 to 1990 for the then very successful television series DIESE DROMBUSCHS on ZDF.

Exciting milieu study, daring cinema, a classic of German-language film! Definitely worth seeing!

This film follows German street kid Willi (Charly Wierczejewski) as he aimlessly bounces around the city of Hamburg. He seems to subsist on stealing tip jars in restaurants and restrooms, but comes under the wing Theo (Walter Kohut), whose main gig is stealing from men picking up boys at the train station. Theo has bigger plans though, robbing the armored car picking up cash at a big supermarket. The only person who takes an positive interest in Willi is journalist Frank (Michael Degen), but even his generous ways can't keep Willi on the straight-and-narrow and even end up hurting his relationship with his girlfriend. I'm familiar with German director Roland Klick but this is actually the first film of his I've seen. It is a decidedly downbeat affair and Klick succeeds in making Hamburg look like a completely hopeless hell on Earth. The perfect film for a depressing German double feature alongside CHRISTIANE F. (1981). Make sure to check out the theme song "Celebration" by Marius West that appears several times in the film.

How did I not hear about this movie before? It's a little jewel. Pain and distress in the big city, the use of crime to escape misery. Well-built characters in a hyperrealist plot. I loved the vision of the greyish and alienating city. The rise of a little thug that everyone likes to humiliate and yet only wanted to be understood and loved. A kind of naturalistic Clockwork Orange.