Die Jugendstreiche des Knaben Karl (1977)

Told in the style of the Ludwig Thoma film adaptations of the 1960s, this recounts episodes from the life of young Karl Valentin as he undergoes training as a carpenter’s apprentice. It features numerous well-known quotations by the Bavarian stage actor and comedian. The actual plot serves merely as a framework for Valentin’s sketches, routines, and texts. The story is set in 1897. In Munich, a fortune-teller looks into her crystal ball and predicts that 15-year-old Karl Fey will become a comedian. His father, Fey, is firmly opposed and wants his boy to learn something “respectable.” But young Karl is pleased by this prediction, since his head is always full of fanciful ideas. He quickly recognizes his talent for seeing beneath the surface, and realizes he can create satire from his observations of everyday life. At a young age, Fey, alias Valentin, discovers his gift for finding absurd comedy in ordinary things. Karl’s appearance in church prompts the curate to make bitter complaints to Karl’s Saxon mother. Then young Valentin first disfigures the barber’s dog, and then his pal Schorsch, the barber’s apprentice, disfigures Rued himself. With a slingshot, Karl sends a projectile crashing into the back of the bailiff’s head. When Karl and his father ask the bank director for a loan they need, he smears the director’s face with spilled ink. A first-rate verbal acrobat, Karl Valentin Fey confounds his old teacher during a lesson about the word “foreign.” And when Kaiser Wilhelm II rides through Munich in an open carriage alongside the Bavarian Prince Regent, Karl pelts the German head of state with white sausages. Finally, the boy Karl deliberately plays out of tune in the wind band, causes great confusion with his turn in the volunteer fire brigade, and tricks the pharmacist out of 600 marks.