Roland Klick’s SUPERMARKT is very well stocked. The largely neglected German auteur produced a wonderfully satisfying work that should be ranked as a classic. His 1973 film is set in a grubby, garbage-strewn Hamburg where low life is about as low as you can get. Right from the first moment we are thrust into a fast-moving film that is almost breathless. That last description is apt as there is more than a bow to Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal thriller.

Here our antihero is Willi, a young petty criminal who is for ever on the run. And run he can – Klick is a master of the tracking shot. His fluid camera takes us with Willi as he sprints from the cops or legs it away from other hoodlums. Charly Wierczejewski is wonderfully deadpan as the troubled teenager Willi. He could not be more down on his uppers – reduced to stealing coins from a café’s tip saucers. One of life’s victims, everybody wants to ‘help’ him: from social workers, a clapped-out journalist (who wants to revive a flagging career by writing a feature about Willi’s social failure), and a rich rent boy client picked up at the main railway station to Theo, a fellow small-time crook who lives in almost comical squalour.

[Klick] has the rare gift of infusing a very dark humour into a tragic tale.

Into this rich mix comes Monika, a sad prostitute whom Willi tries to protect in a street brawl with her pimp. Willi, it is clear, has a heart of gold and the one happy moment we see is when he plays joyfully with Monika’s toddler son. Monika is the one person not trying to suck Willi’s blood. Hers is a rare tenderness that comes without a price tag: a bottom of the heap Romeo and Juliet desperate to climb out of the prison of poverty.

Klick’s storytelling is incredibly fast paced and he leaves you lots of gaps to fill in for yourself, allowing for a rich multilayered plot. He has the rare gift of infusing a very dark humour into a tragic tale: for instance, in one scene Theo persuades Willi to take part in an armed heist at a supermarket. In a glorious Laurel and Hardy moment, the hopeless hood Theo accidentally tips a garbage truck full of rubbish into his getaway path. He steps on an old rusty bed spring which he can’t get off as the hold up goes awry. Though the boys get away with a mass of dosh, they are stuck with a hostage who later escapes into Theo’s rambling factory squat. Willi and Theo’s hopelessness is clear, but Klick recognizes that despair can be funny.

Willi’s progress to either redemption or doom (guess which), is superbly handled, and there is not a dull moment in the whole film. There are moments of truly startling visual narrative (such as Willi destroying a Modigliani in a fit of anger at the home of rich would-be sex client). SUPERMARKT is that rarest of rarities: a forgotten classic.

httpvh://vimeo.com/34439718