Servants and other masters

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Movie
Original title Servants and other masters
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1978
length 57 minutes
Rod
Director Wolfgang luck
script Lida Winiewicz
production Gyula Trebitsch
camera WP Hassenstein
occupation

Diener and other gentlemen is a 1977 German television episode film with Heinz Rühmann in the leading role. Directed by Wolfgang Glück . The episodes were based on literary sources by W. Somerset Maugham and PG Wodehouse .

action

Rühmann plays several Irish characters in this almost one-hour production.

First episode: Not far from St. Peter's Square

Rühmann plays here the parishioner Albert Foreman, who is dismissed from one second to the next after 17 years of service. His boss has heard that the old man cannot read or write, nor does he intend to ever want to learn. The released man then begins to change his job and, as a result of a chance encounter, decides to open a small tobacco shop. Contrary to expectations, the old man achieved considerable prosperity in a short time, now owns ten shops and a fortune of over 100,000 pounds. His bank manager then advises him to invest his money, but is still amazed at how illiterate people could get so rich. What kind of possibilities would have been open to the man if he could read and write, says the banker! Well, the businessman Foreman replies: Church servants in St. Peter's in Neville Square.

Second episode: Homeless in People's Park

In this story, Rühmann falls victim to homelessness and poverty as Edward's chief clerk when the company he had previously worked for goes bankrupt. The descent is rapid, the respected general manager turns into a bum who everyone looks down on and who tries to find his nocturnal resting place on a draughty park bench. But even there he is not left in peace. Then a bum comes along and gives the fallen victim a hot tip: How about committing a crime in order to get into police custody and to have the state assigned a warm, dry place to spend the winter in prison? Said and done. But it is not that easy to get arrested. Everything that the little tramp does goes wrong, and nobody believes his committed offenses. In the end, the former general manager collapsed in a posh restaurant, but now the tide is turning. Since the old man, as a gourmet, has an idea of ​​good cuisine, he ends up in a new job instead of the hoped-for prison cell, as the manager of the noble restaurant is very impressed by Edward's menu composition.

Final episode: Feather reading at Hunter's Lodge

Scenes from a marriage: Rühmann plays the inconspicuous, former elementary school teacher David, who has become a recognized ornithologist . After 30 years of marriage, however, he hardly has anything to say to his wife. A defective cuckoo clock ultimately leads to an urgently needed, verbal argument arising from the two living past each other. Each of the two spouses suddenly has the opportunity to finally tell the other on the head what bothers him about her or her about him ... and a lot has accumulated. In doing so, it becomes clear to both of them that their marriage still has more substance than both had previously suspected. After David repaired the cuckoo clock again, he sums up not only the time indicator but also his own marriage: “Small repair. We should have done it long ago! "

Production notes

Servants and other gentlemen , subtitled Stories from Ireland , was created in 1977 and was broadcast for the first time on Sunday, February 5, 1978 at 8 p.m. on ZDF.

Reception and classification

After his phase of rebellion against the role cliché of the indestructible "little man from the street", which he largely adhered to after around 100 films, which he tried to counter with literary roles of bulky and desperate characters in his early television films (1968 to 1973), Rühmann returned for the Hamburg production company Gyula Trebitschs returned to the tried and tested with three episode films at the end of the 1970s. “He no longer played tragic or failing characters, at most melancholy doubters or seekers who, in the end, were definitely helped. With these age roles he approached the stories of the 'little man' again, which ended in conciliatory terms and hardly ever dismissed the viewer with a conflicted worldview. "

Der Spiegel saw here “Heinz Rühmann in his standard role as the touchingly funny little man. The four mini-dramas about bizarre outsiders were filmed in Ireland based on stories by Somerset Maugham, O.Henry and others and are considered Rühmann's 'wishful stories'. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Torsten Körner: A good friend. Heinz Rühmann biography
  2. ↑ Short review in Der Spiegel 5/1978 of January 30, 1978

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