Looping (1980)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Looping |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1981 |
| length | 110 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Walter Bockmayer , Rolf Bührmann |
| script |
Pea Fröhlich , Peter Märthesheimer |
| production | Walter Bockmeyer, Rolf Bührmann |
| music | Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music) |
| camera | Michael Ballhaus |
| cut |
Ila von Hasperg , Walter Bockmeyer |
| occupation | |
| |
Looping is a German fictional film made in 1980 by Walter Bockmayer and Rolf Bührmann with Hans Christian Blech and Shelley Winters in the leading roles of an aging showman couple.
action
“Come closer, step in!” Shouts a show booth owner and leads the viewer into the world of the showman, in which every day is a struggle for economic survival, for bare existence. Some of the drivers have a secret; the old man who longs for a young thing as well as the ticket seller who has to feed a drinking wife and a vicious daughter at home. At the center of this world of noisy and sometimes cacophonic tones is an aging couple. He, that is the dull staring Johnny, who knows the plump and resolute Carmen at his side and has long been chasing another maiden, the crisp young Tanja. The old team runs a fair that is doing more badly - just like their marriage. With their “Show International”, as the dumpster is euphemistically called, the estranged couple moves from fairground to fairground. While Johnny has long been anchored in Tanja's life, Carmen does not (yet) want to give up: she dreams of setting up a big ride and believes that if this would work, her marriage would get going again.
The previous attraction of the hype was the Diseuse Inga, which will be replaced by Tanja, the lascivious beast who promises better income. It is the young woman who seems to liven up Johnny's dreary life. As a stripper, she lets the hormones of the male visitors boil, including those of the old and sexually abstinent Johnny. His Carmen knows of the danger that lurks behind Tanja's provocative pelvic and hip swing and shows the little slut in his place, which in turn lets Johnny reach for the bottle. Carmen wants now that Tanja rented from the carnival colleagues Capone for a season bumper cars bestrippt Plant, and meet Johnny a lifelong dream: both save a special attraction, the looping. The cash register is supposed to ring because of Tanja, who pulls herself bare and lets herself be chased across the floor by the scooter drivers as "persecuted innocence" while the old man has to save her in a ridiculous Superman costume every time. The whole thing is pretty ridiculous and degrading, but at least Tanja's appearances with full physical exertion finally bring decent income back into Johnny's and Carmen's wallets, which at least distracts the old man a little while counting money in the evening.
The booted Inga is meanwhile with thoughts of revenge: Wasn't Johnny once, when he was younger and didn’t tell his Carmen’s fairy tales at night, as keen on her mother as he is now on the stripping Tanja? And didn't Carmen, back then as an art shooter, kill this mother as cold as ice? A regrettable “accident”, of course, as the assured. The fatal shot was nothing more than a malpractice, a tragic mishap. While Carmen and Johnny do the inauguration curves on their new, expensive looping device and Tanja smiles tortured for the last time because she sexually heated Johnny again, Inga shoots the two old men in the forehead with a cold smile.
Production notes
Looping , also known under the long title Looping - The long dream of great happiness , was created in the summer / autumn of 1980 and was premiered on April 29, 1981 in Cologne's theater on Rudolfplatz.
Tabea Blumenschein took care of the furnishings . For 1950s star Adrian Hoven this was his last film role.
Awards
One gold tape each went on
- the directors Bockmayer and Bührmann
- to actress Ingrid Caven
- Nomination for Hans Christian Blech
A film tape in silver came on
- Looping in the "Best Feature Film" category
Reviews
“Bockmayer, who shot such a touchingly beautiful film as 'Flammende Herzen' and staged the anti-social drama 'Kiez' by Peter Greiner at the Cologne theater with great verve and sincerity, definitely got into a skid in 'Looping' and kept going Slipped on soapy kitsch. So far, Bockmayer has handled the kitsch as carefully as a cold frame: the most bizarre and tender plants of hopes and proliferating dreams then grew out of it. [...] But instead of looking for the triviality there, he grafted it onto the fair. The film 'Looping' doesn't really make a dime novel talk, but treats reality as condescendingly as a dime novel. The actors portray the traveling trade of the showman in the same way as more sedate gentlemen play old men and women in charades: They exaggerate shamelessly and excessively, for fear that one would otherwise be able to suspect the proximity between the portrayed and the performer. So this is how Bockmayer and his team deal with the happiness and suffering of the show booth people: They pummel them to the ground, they sell them off as a dull, healthy public sentiment. "
“'Looping' by Walter Bockmayer and Rolf Bührmann starts out very promisingly: with a very nice long tracking shot through a nocturnal fairground area. An apparently drunk woman stumbles past the shooting galleries, bumper cars, ghost trains and other attractions. 'Looping' has an atmosphere that gives hope for a great melodrama. But it soon turns out that the otherwise imaginative Cologne filmmakers Bockmayer and Bührmann ... didn't quite know whether they really were. Wanted to do melodrama or just a parody of the countless story of the cuckold and the femme fatale . Hans-Christian Blech plays the aging showman Johnny with unbroken seriousness, while Sydne Rome (as vampire Tanja) seems to have escaped from a bad comic strip. The film, written carelessly and provided with the most flamboyant and cumbersome dialogues imaginable by Peter Märthesheimer and Pea Fröhlich, never finds a rhythm, a narrative tone that reveals an interest in the milieu and the characters. There are miniature grotesques (Jürgen Flimm, Peter Schlesinger) next to striptease interludes and dramatic appearances by Blech, his jealous wife Shelley Winters (who remains strangely pale), the rolling eyes Sydne Rome and the unspeakable Ingrid Caven. It prepares the story for a bloody and grossly motivated end. "
“An aging showman couple, who use every means to achieve their dream of a motorcycle loop, are shot and killed by their protégé, a young woman who was pushed aside because of a stripper, during the premiere ride with the loop. Outwardly complex, but bloodless, dramatically thin drama; brightly staged and underlaid with too loud music. "
Web links
- Looping in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Looping at filmportal.de