Liebling, sei nicht albern! (1970)

Andreas is a well-known fashion photographer with an unmistakable ladies’ man charm. He is always surrounded by attractive models, but despite this constant temptation, he now wants at last to marry his great love, Maria, whom he met when she was working as a saleswoman in a record shop. But Martin, a friend and colleague who asserts that he has a prior claim on Maria, is against it and henceforth moves heaven and earth to keep the two from consummating their wedding night. Martin keeps coming up with something new ever since he took the pastor’s question at the wedding ceremony in the brick church—whether anyone wished to object to the marriage—far too literally. No idea is too silly, no trick too bizarre for him to prevent Maria and Andreas from having sex for the first time as a married couple. For example, outside the hotel where the newlyweds finally intend to “consummate” their marriage, he arranges for a brass band to start blaring in the middle of their wedding night. That same night, Andreas and Maria flee the infernal racket as it begins and make a getaway in his snow-white Mercedes 190 SL. But Martin has something in store for their next place to spend the night, too: this time, when the couple arrive, he is already lying in their bed, made up to look like a dead voodoo magician, and gives the newlyweds quite a fright for a moment. When Maria then says that she can no longer have sex here, where a “corpse” has been lying in their bed, Andreas gets out of bed in annoyance and spends the night on a sofa in the next room. Then, the following morning, even their whispered sweet nothings are carried out into the street, because Martin has connected a microphone in their room to loudspeakers attached to the outside wall. That is the last straw for Andreas. Now he wants to have it out with Martin. To make matters worse, a policeman is just then issuing a parking ticket for his car for parking where stopping is prohibited. Then one of Andy’s former flings, Nicole, an Asian woman who speaks with a Saxon accent, turns up, strips naked in front of Maria, and jumps into bed with her ex. Now it is Maria’s turn to be furious; she runs off when Andy’s pal Walter also appears in the nude, with a naked blonde at his side. Andreas runs after Maria to try to salvage the situation. The two hide in his Benz convertible, parked on Hamburg’s Mönckebergstraße, and decide that here, in the coming night and in the cramped space, they will finally sleep together. This immediately attracts the attention of the same policeman who had shortly before attached the ticket to the car’s windshield. Andreas and Maria see only one way to finally be alone together: they take the next plane out of the city. But even the first lodging they plan to stay at in their destination is already occupied by several young people, whom Martin has surely arranged to be there. Exhausted, Maria and Andreas sink together into an empty bathtub and fall asleep completely worn out. Many more obstacles and mishaps are to follow before the young couple can finally spend their wedding night undisturbed—and of all places, in a cowshed.