Mysterien eines Frisiersalons

Playwright Bertolt Brecht, taking advantage of a break in between two plays he was presenting in Munich, provided a brief outline of notes of skits for his first film he directed, 1923's "Mysteries of a Barbershop," otherwise known as "The Mysteries of a Hairdresser's Shop." This short 33-minute film illustrates several bizarro events taking place during an afternoon at an ordinary hair cuttery. Brecht instructed his actors to fill in the gaps of his brief scenario by ad libbing.

The more memorable skits were the barber (Karl Valentin) cutting a customer's hair so much he resembles a person from China, and an incident where he accidentally cuts off another customer's head while shaving the neck. With all the chaos swirling around the barbershop, employees Erwin Faber and Blandine Ebinger find time to embrace and kiss, a signature happy ending Brecht found in many of his plays' conclusions.

From all accounts, everyone involved in the production, including director Erich Engel, weren't exactly enamored with the finished product and decided not to distribute it. The film, discovered in a Moscow archival house in the 1970's, was reassessed and determined that, because of Brecht's involvement and its inventiveness, "Mysteries of a Barbershop" was a very important work in the German cinema of illusionism.

In a barbershop, the famous Professor Moras and author of the successful book How to Be Attractive asks the clumsy barber to cut his hair and beard exactly like in the poster in a door. However, the barber assistant accidentally turns the back of the poster with the picture of a skinhead Chinese and the barber follows the hairstyle. Meanwhile the assistant, who has a crush on Moras, is jealous of his mate and treats the woman badly. The woman cries and the three clients that are in the waiting room read in the front page of the newspaper that a man was cut by a barber and they become scared. Professor Moras leaves the barbershop completely upset with his weird appearance and when he meets an acquaintance in a restaurant, he uses a client's hat to hide his haircut. The client believes that he is stealing the hat and defies him to a duel with sabers. Before the fight, the man goes to the barbershop and the barber startles and accidentally beheads him. But the barber fixes the head with a band but during the duel, the barber assistant uses a stick fishing to remove the head and save her beloved Moras.

"Mysterien eines Frisiersalons" is an absurdly hilarious short. The surrealistic story is written and directed by Bertolt Brecht and Erich Engel and it is worth watching. I laughed a lot with the barber with a huge nose and his bearded clients. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Mistérios de Uma Barbearia" ("The Mysteries of a Barbershop")

Karl Valentin plays here an idiotic barber (who looks like a thin shoe-lace with an enormous nose) and only that image of seeing him as a barber is worth seeing.

It's a bit hard to catch up with the story in this short, but the crazy images of Valentin: chopping a customer's head in mistake, hair-cutting a professor in Chinese style... are pretty damn funny. Those images come with some neat old simple effects and photography.

It's hard to get a chance to see many Valentin's movies but if this one is reachable to you I recommend you to see it. Especially if you like those old silent slapstick flicks (Valentin's hero was Chaplin).

I adored it.