Hair Salon Mysteries
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Hair Salon Mysteries |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 32 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Erich Engel Bertolt Brecht |
| script | Bertolt Brecht Erich Engel Karl Valentin |
| production | Kupro-Film Munich |
| occupation | |
| |
Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon is a surreal short film from 1922 by Erich Engel and Bertolt Brecht with Karl Valentin in the leading role of a hairdresser who gets into various grotesque situations while working.
action
The absurd experiences of a hairdresser, his exalted colleague and both customers are told.
In a small salon. While three long-bearded customers are waiting impatiently to be served, the hairdresser has laid down on a high stand where he calmly reads the newspaper and smokes a cigar. Meanwhile, his young colleague with the wild mane on her head makes ecstatic dance moves and then sits down on the barber's chair to leaf through a little book. Suddenly a customer dressed in a Chaplinesque appearance appears whose biggest problem is not her hairstyle, but rather an oversized, rock-hard wart on the left side of her chin. The hairdresser desperately tries to remove them by all means. Even a treatment with hammer and chisel resists the giant furuncle. Finally, the hairdresser picks up the pliers and quickly clips the wart off.
Meanwhile the other three men with their grotesque beards and huge head of hair are still waiting for their treatment. The hairdresser has meanwhile been roused by her boss, the owner of the shop, and stopped at work. But she doesn't think about it. She prefers to indulge in her daydreams, and one of them is called Moras, professor of cosmetics and author of the book 'How do I become personable?' Its advertising poster is even hanging on the revolving door in the salon. Finally Moras enters that hairdressing salon with his lover. But the hairdresser has to take on the thankless task of styling the snooty mistress of the adored book author, while the hairdresser Moras is to cut his advertising poster to size. This interruption doesn't suit him at all, he's busy with his snack.
While the hairdresser straps the Moras friend to the hairdressing chair, disheveled the hair of her tower hairstyle in a fit of jealousy and finally stuffs a cotton ball into the woman's mouth so that she can finally relax, the colleague begins treating Moras. Before doing this, the hairdresser takes a quick look at the poster with the desired hairstyle. The three men waiting restlessly for their treatment read in horror in the newspaper that a hairdresser accidentally cut the neck of a customer at work. In the meantime, the hairdresser even treats Moras' lover with electric shocks, and the waiting customers startle when the hairdresser walks past them with a long knife that he only wanted to sharpen to trim a beard.
When the hairdresser goes back to the revolving door to get some paint, with which she now finally intends to deface her customer, she accidentally turns the revolving door. Now an Odol advertising poster with a Chinese man and a corresponding Asian hairstyle can be seen, while the Moras poster is on the back. The hairdresser, who wants to make sure of the hairstyle template again, is a little surprised about the taste of his customer, but finally gives Moras this Chinese hairstyle. He is gripped by sheer horror when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time. The three customers who have been waiting for ages can hardly keep laughing while Prof. Moras stands there in tears. When his disfigured lover, who waddles in the duck path, comes along, the mishap is perfect. But the hairdresser doesn't think it's all that bad and continues to languish on her moras with his Chinese head and the once gorgeous full beard, reduced to goatee ends. Meanwhile, the hairdresser has withdrawn to his hairdressing room and pretends to work, but lies back on his loft bed for another siesta.
Moras fled the store and went to a café. There he sees an acquaintance who he doesn't want to face the way he looks now. When she turns around to him, he can steal a hat from a shelf at the last second, which he puts on immediately. He sits down next to her and rests his chin on his hand so that the ruined beard is no longer visible. Then the hairdresser enters the café and greets Moras by taking off his hat. Annoyed that Moras doesn't say hello, the hairdresser grabs a siphon bottle and shoots the hat off his disfigured head with a targeted jet of water. Moras' acquaintance starts laughing. Then the man from whom Moras stole the headgear from the coat stand arrives and demands his hat back. A scuffle with grave consequences ensues. Moras feels completely made an idiot by this café guest and asks for a duel.
In the meantime, the three salon customers who are still waiting pass their time with a game of Skat. Then a mysterious, black-clad, bearded man with a suitcase enters the hairdressing salon and asks the hairdresser to sharpen his saber, which he takes from the suitcase. He, on the other hand, enters the hairdresser's room, who comes down from his couch, and asks to have his hair done. When the hairdresser is frightened by an unfamiliar noise, the mishap has happened. He accidentally cut off the head of his customer, who is none other than the café guest who is looking forward to the saber duel with Moras! This suddenly begins to lead a life of its own and walks around on the floor of the salon. When the hairdresser approaches the three restlessly walking up and down waiting customers with her head cut off, all three faint. The hairdresser disappears too, only she falls into the decapitated man's suitcase. The hairdresser takes his head back from the colleague, closes the suitcase with the colleague and reattach the head to the body of the customer's victim.
In the meantime, Prof. Moras is getting fit for the upcoming duel with physical exercises. After a few wipes through the hairdresser, the once beheaded customer gets up again and begins to go into a trance. Before he leaves the salon with the hairdresser in his suitcase, he shoots the silly hairdresser with a drawn revolver. Moras and his adversary have agreed to meet for a duel in the Senegalese salon. Both fight the duel with sabers when the hairdresser awakens from her faint and gets out of the suitcase. During a break in the fight she has the chance to support her revered Moras. She climbed up behind a huge mask and got herself a fishing rod with which she unceremoniously fished the head that had been re-attached by her colleague from the neck of Moras' opponent, just as he was about to give Moras the fatal blow. Beaming with joy, the hairdresser comes down and hugs her crush. Meanwhile the hairdresser has woken up again. The bullet fired at him had hit a small, apparently rock-hard ball, which he carried in his vest pocket, just above his heart.
Production notes
The film was shot in the summer / autumn of 1922 in the attic of a Munich house on Tengstrasse. It is Valentine's most famous silent film production. Occasionally the film is led under the inapplicable title The Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon .
The two-acter passed film censorship on July 14, 1923 and was banned from young people.
As can be read in Bucher's encyclopedia of the film, the mysteries of a hairdressing salon is "a job that was understood as great fun by all concerned, and financed by a barber who wanted to get his talented brother a film role."
A large number of the participating actors were engaged at the Münchner Kammerspiele at the time of shooting .
Hans Leibelt is often given the role of hairdressing salon owner. When looking at these scenes, however, Otto Wernicke can clearly be seen in this role.
Performances
The film, made in 1922, was released for showing on July 14, 1923 with a youth ban. The condition of the film censorship was a shortening of 11.75 meters (approx. 30 seconds) of the offending film material. The premiere was in July 1923, contemporary reviews are available until 1928. Valentin prohibited further screenings of the film after he learned that Brecht had taken the story "from an old American slapstick". The macabre grotesque was rediscovered in 1973 and is considered a cult film by cineastes. Copies of the film can be found in the Filmmuseum Munich and the Filmmuseum Berlin .
criticism
The film's large lexicon of people called the mysteries of a hairdressing salon "an extremely imaginative and humorous grotesque"
Heinrich Fraenkel's Immortal Film described the work as a "fantastic film grotesque"
In ikdb.de it says: "A film satire with bizarre ideas and black humor"
“A delirium, a farce, an absurd theater” is what bothmer-music.de says, and Hans Sahl said in the January 28, 1928 issue of Monday Morning that Valentin was “a brilliant clown” and a “Bavarian buster Keaton ".
Web links
- Mysteries of a Barbershop in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Mysteries of a hairdressing salon in filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bucher's Encyclopedia of Films, Lucerne and Frankfurt / M. 1977, p. 822
- ↑ a b Monika Dimpfl: Karl Valentin: Biography. German Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-24611-8 , p. 158 ff.
- ↑ a b c Laura Wilfinger: The 'execution' of the intellectual and his restoration in the thinking. Brechtian proposals for a 'quotable' image of the intellectual. In: Stephen Brockmann (Ed.): End, limit, end? Brecht and death. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3891-4 , p. 51 f .; limited preview in Google Book search
- ^ A b Philipp Stiasny: The mysteries of a hairdressing salon on stummfilmkonzerte.de by Stephan von Bothmer
- ^ Distribution films: The Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon , Filmmuseum Berlin
- ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 2: C - F. John Paddy Carstairs - Peter Fritz. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 554.
- ^ Heinrich Fraenkel: Immortal Film. The great chronicle from the Laterna Magica to the sound film. Kindler Verlag Munich 1956, p. 408
- ↑ Mysteries of a hairdressing salon criticism in ikdb.de