Piroschka

Over half a century ago, when I was 19, my friend Per Sinats took me to see a film he had seen once before: "Ich Denke Oft an Piroschke" ("I Often Think of Piroschke"). Most of the film has faded in my memory, but I remember the first glimpse the feckless young hero and I got of Liselotte Pulver in Hungarian peasant's garb standing in some outdoor setting - a farmer's field perhaps? - smiling at us both. THAT'S the archetypal image I keep in my heart - a natural beauty, an open, welcoming smile, an invitation to a summer of love.

Per and I were both smitten with Liselotte Pulver, aka Piroshka, and went to any movie she was in, though we never quite re-captured the fresh, guileless Hungarian peasant girl.

That was in the autumn. By the next springtime I had a real-life German girlfriend, Rose, who at 19 was as open, trusting, and willing to love as Piroshka. Perhaps not as beautiful, but then, who was? Not even Liselotte Pulver herself, I daresay, except on celluloid. Suffice it to say that Rose pleased me.

But like Hans in the movie I left Germany after a year with no plans to return, and when I next ran into Rose I was forty, and married. And the next time I was sixty, and divorced, but with another woman in tow. And finally, last summer, seventy-one and once again single.

Rose never married - never WANTED to marry, she avers, for fear of losing her independence, her chance at the satisfying career that in fact she has had. But had I been the love of her life, as she once wrote in a letter? Had my abandonment of her ruined her life, or had it, rather, allowed her to have the life she wanted?

In any case our six-day reunion was sweet, and I spent another two weeks with her at Xmas, and plan on going back again.

She is deeply rooted in the town where she was born, in the house she inherited from her parents, on a hillside overlooking the Neckar river a few miles east of Heidelberg. She has friends who married Americans and who after decades here still regret leaving Germany. Despite my fondness for Germany I don't want to live there, and she won't even fly to visit me in far-off Alaska, so I must fly there if I want to see her again, and I do.

The friendship is sweet, and preserves some of that fantasy the movie captured - that somewhere out there is the perfect lover, eternally young, smiling at us from a field of shimmering wheat, giving everything and asking nothing of us except what we willingly have to give. And so I still often think of "Ich Denke Oft an Piroschke."

I was expecting your typical colourful, sickly-sweet, inane, trashy, multicoloured, forget-the-war, 1950ies eyecandy. In fact I only saw this because I'd read in an article that in German carnival, a Piroschka costume is as popular a costume for females as pirate, cowboy or Indian costumes are for men.

In other words, I wasn't exactly bracing myself for a staggering cinematic experience.

What I got was a captivating, timeless, epic and utterly charming love story. Naive, yes. Construed, you bet. Psychedelically coloured, hell yeah. A fairy tale. But one that knocked me dead. Lilo Pulver, a Swiss German who already has a hard a time hiding her Swiss German accent, affects a silly Hungarian patois, but she more than makes up for it by creating the phenotype of a sassy, vervy ingénue who has to fight her mundane "blonde poison" adversary (Wera Frydtberg) for the love of doe-eyed German student dreamboat (apparently) Andreas (Gunnar Möller).

This movie is an enormous accomplishment of director Kurt Hoffman (I know, I'd never heard of this guy either). Everything is just perfectly in place, spot-on. There are 999 ways of getting this movie wrong, just one way of getting it right, and Hoffman nailed it.

Girls, if you ever wondered "what men want", forget Cosmo and Sex In The City -- here's the blueprint.

This is the story of first love between a German college student and a young Hungarian girl in a tiny Hungarian town with an enormously long name. Told from the college student's memories, the early 1900s events are told with the purity of innocent romance known to all who have felt that warm feeling of the heart when falling in love for the first time.

The two young people are soul mates that somehow were not meant to be happy together. Knowing that they will never find another true love like this, each is left only with the eternal memories of that one wonderful summer.

A young Lieselotte Pulver is perfectly cast as the sweet and innocent Piroschka, with Karl-Heinz Boehm as the young student visiting from Germany. The gentle Gustav Knuth plays Piroschka's father, who has the privilege of shouting out the town's extremely long and difficult to pronounce name whenever a train arrives. Other well-known actors of the day make up an effective supporting cast.

The use of brilliant color and the inclusion of an impressive score makes this a true cinema gem. If you enjoy a sweet love story with the charm of the simple life of times past, you're going to like this picture!

Try to pronounce it - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta. Yes, that's the name of the place where the young German student Andreas finds his Piroschka. It's a very small railway station in the southeast of Hungary in the glossy 20's. Rural and idyllic.

Liselotte Pulver is lovely as Piroschka, the 17 years old daughter of station master Gustav Knuth. It's a movie full of joy. Beautiful and charming. It really makes you happy when watching it. Music, csàrdàs and feast in a true Hungarian way. But perhaps it's a bit too grievous when it comes to the final part, when Andreas has to leave, when his Hungarian summer is over. He shall never return to Piroschka - just living with sweet memories of her and a wonderful summer in - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta...

In 1925 a young german student comes to a small town in Hungary for vacation.

He falls in love with the young daughter (Piroschka) of the railwaystation officer who herself uninhibitedly loves him.

Complications arise as he already had started a relation with a german girl shortly before arriving in Hungary.

He has to decide and goes all-in for Piroschka, but being hurt she refuses him.

On the final day of his vacation she finally meets him again and goes into huge troubles to keep him in Hungary, but the vacation is over .... (I won't spoiler the end).

This is told in a very warm, romantic and lighthearted way, as the story is narrated by the student himself, but 30 years later, as he remembers Piroschka (hence the title). The movie is very open about that his memories are - well - veiled by romantic interpretation, as mostly the visuals don't match his voice-over narration.

Matching the light-hearted and naive tone of his memories, the movie itself is kept simple, but in a very clever way.

Acting is good, but Liselotte Pulver stands out as the young, full-blooded Piroschka, with her face really reflecting the force of her emotions. She plays for laughs but beneath that you always see the truth shining through.

The movie is the greatest statement of young, uninhibited love and devotion you will find. It's funny, sad warm and overall pleasant.

I wonder if the movie was released in Hungary and how it was received there as it is overall very positive about the Hungarians.

And as the movie is based on the real recollections of the author, I wonder (like so many) whatever happened to Piroschka.

If you've ever fallen in love as a student on vacation with a local girl, this is the movie for you.

This review is based on the viewing of a restored print in 2022.