The Roland Klick series at the Cambridge Film Festival came to a close with a showing of 4 of the German director’s early shorts from 1963-6. These were presented in chronological order (which also happened to be ascending length) and for the first time with English subtitles, especially translated for the screening.
Though the films at first seem disconnected in subject matter, they share many stylistic elements. All of them are shot in black and white, and, save the last film, do not have much dialogue. They are not primarily plot driven, and seem to take place within a 24-hour period, becoming windows on incidents in lives. A main theme is couplings across the sexes failing to properly connect. People in shots are often spatially choreographed, moving balletically through scenes, while Klick occasionally whirs around central characters or objects. His use of experimental techniques seems to have grown over time.
The first short was the slight WEINACHT (“Christmas”), which starts with a shot over the Alps, before quickly descending to focus on a cute young boy in his small winter town. There follows a virtuoso and dizzy-making 10 minute montage of the detritus of a German Christmas as seen by the child: toy gnomes clap their symbols, people search for Christmas trees, mannequins sit in shop windows, and assorted animals all jump to the rhythms of assorted musical accompaniment.
[LUDWIG] brilliantly conveys a story and a place through a few simple expressions and situations.
LUDWIG, though not much longer, is a more substantial piece, again made by Klick whilst he was still at acting school. It stars Ottes Zandler (who has only recently passed away) in his first proper role, as a Bavarian villager working at a local mine. In the first scene, we see the lead being sneered at: other residents bullyingly shine a light into his eyes whilst he inspects an insect. He goes to work smashing rocks and finds a large fossil, before cycling home, strategically stopping to pump up his bicycle tyre near a pretty woman in a field, who we presume to be the object of his affections.
In very washed out and pale images, unlike the darker JIMMY ORPHEUS, we see the seemingly-simple Ludwig playing with local children. He spends the evening with other adults, first in a comically silent digs dinner, and then with a group of men who convene in a tavern. Throughout, the woman is in the background, and Ludwig watches her closely up to an emotive finale. This excellent short, which Klick has said he thinks of as his best work, brilliantly conveys a story and a place through a few simple expressions and situations. It was partly based on autobiographical thoughts concerning a friend from the director’s childhood community.
Though the finale of ZWEI seems hurried, the depiction of different ordinary days becomes unexpectedly gripping.
The third film, ZWEI (TWO), which is 26 minutes long, focuses on a man and a woman who live in the same apartment block. They cross paths twice in the same 24-hour period: once in the morning, and again after dark. At the beginning of the day, we see the suited man descending in a lift. Reaching the bottom, he passes Nelli, who is coming home after a night’s work at what seems to be sex club. From here, the film cuts between the two’s different days – the man bothering women in his office, and Nelli sleeping, going to the shops, and then picking up pictures of herself from a saucy photographer.
The cutting between their experiences speeds up towards the evening, as the man cavorts with friends and Nelli prepares for another night. Whilst both are out on the street, they meet again, and have an embarrassing altercation. Though the finale of ZWEI seems hurried, the depiction of different ordinary days becomes unexpectedly gripping. Whilst the number ‘two’ at first seems to refer to the number of protagonists and their meetings, their lives are in fact rather lonely and devoid of any proper pairing. Both characters, but particularly Nelli, are often shown looking in different mirrors, and as Klick circles around his leads, their reflected doubles are the most prominent examples of the number.
JIMMY ORPHEUS lacks the narrative tensions created by legal troubles in Godard’s classic.
The final film, JIMMY ORPHEUS, is almost an hour long, and was meant to be a feature before the director ran out of money. Starring Klaus Schichan and Ortrud Beginnen as a couple of the night, it was usefully introduced beforehand as Klick’s experiment with new wave cinema, by programmer Verena von Stackelberg. The handsome Jimmy is introduced working at the docks with his own title song (in English), which reports that unlike Shaft, he is rather a deadbeat (‘he’s got no race to run’ and only ‘works for whiskey’). We join him one Friday night, as he gets vigorously drunk in various clubs – eventually holding onto a pinball machine and harassing older women as the camera wheels around. After sobering up in a doorway, Jimmy meets a mysterious girl, and the two circle each other until morning.
The drawn-out romance, though charming to begin with, starts to become irksome with one too many splits and reunions. Though, as in BREATHLESS, prolonged debates between couples is common in the genre, JIMMY ORPHEUS lacks the narrative tensions created by legal troubles in Godard’s classic. More interesting is Klick’s experimentation: shots of the couple’s addresses are sometimes spliced oddly, creating a scratching effect, while some sounds are strangely exaggerated. The lead character’s thoughts are only occasionally revealed by an erratic inner monologue, and whilst waiting by some mailboxes he makes reference to the Klick’s own post from Sweden in a brief meta-fiction. There is a very satisfying conclusion to finish, bringing an end to the shorts and the wider series.
httpvh://youtu.be/rWb6dwSh67E