...Being an Adult, However, Very Much So

16mm Film - ...Being an Adult, However, Very Much So - BRD 1956

Direction: Helga Hart and Wolf Hart

Script: Eugen Roth, Helga Hart, Wolf Hart

Camera: Wolf Hart, Volker Bergmann, Jens-Uwe Scheffler

Music: Johannes Aschenbrenner, Bernhard Hamann

Narrator: Günther Jerschke

Cast: Otto Lüthje, Helga Hart, Sabine Hart, and others.

'There lies the man who has everything: wife, child and apartment outside the city, refrigerator and radio and all the clutter bestowed upon us by the economic miracle!' These verses by Eugen Roth open the film. And if we also quote the following, we have essentially already outlined the framework of this satire, furnished with many delightful feuilletonistic highlights: 'The child, after a well-slept night, woke up without a care!' The contrasts are enormous. The bow is stretched so far that the matter (though everyday!) becomes unnatural and grotesque. A game of wit for the sake of the punchline? — 'There is a sequence in this film where the camera pans into a street, captures the display of a bookshop, quickly approaches until a book appears in close-up: José Ortega y Gasset's "The Revolt of the Masses". This is the first hint that this film, which at first glance appears to be a light-hearted harmless grotesque, aims at something deeper. This is the intention and idea of the film: it is about the modern "everyman", about people of our time dominated by haste, work, telephone and automobile, who are moving ever further away from the natural rhythm of life and becoming prisoners of themselves. The great race against time begins!