Der Paukenspieler (1971)

An episodic film inspired by Paul Klee’s drawings, which seeks to assemble a mosaic-like picture of a reality in which the individual is at the mercy of social constraints and public violence. On the outskirts of Munich, several antisocial youths celebrate the successes of their small and insignificant robberies day after day in a shabby nightclub. The seven-year-old daughter of a building superintendent idolizes the leader of the gang. When the young man resists during a police raid and is shot dead, the girl begins a dance dedicated to him. Young Marie Louise was once married to a senior official, but was widowed at an early age. Now all she has left is Friedrich Hofstetter, her childhood sweetheart. They have always felt deeply and intimately connected, but for economic reasons they never married. Now, very late in life, the two aged lovers want to take this final step after all, to affirm their bond. But it is too late: Friedrich dies shortly before the wedding. A jaded and cynical journalist working as a reporter for a tabloid travels to Yugoslavia with a colleague, a photographer responsible for the story’s pictures, on a fact-finding trip. When he observes a young couple in love there, he becomes adamant that true love and human happiness do not actually exist. He manages to substantiate his theory by means of a nasty trick. Franzl is a rather immature and spoiled teenage boy who does not understand the consequences of his actions. He thinks it is funny to shoot at things with his small-caliber rifle from his parents’ apartment window. The targets are sometimes old mattresses, sometimes cooking pots. But the residents panic, believing that a crazed gunman is on the loose. The police and fire brigade are alerted and arrive, and, spurred on by the hysteria of the onlookers and supposed witnesses, begin trying to flush out the “madman with the rifle.” In the final part, a veteran of the world war takes center stage. The colonel general is a decorated officer, and a grand military tattoo is to be held in his honor on the eve of his 80th birthday. As he marches in the military ceremony, the old campaigner begins to think about the mistakes he made in a winter battle for which he was once responsible, in which many young soldiers lost their lives. After so many years, the long-suppressed pangs of conscience finally return to him.