Razza padrona

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.

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.

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.

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!

Authentic views of run-down 70s neighborhood aesthetics, great pace of the movie