Yes, even West Germans, who have been schooled in serious films, like to laugh out loud, and at silly and boisterous physical comedy. North Americans know only the somber arthouse movies from Wenders, Von Trotta, Herzog, Schlondorff and Fassbinder, in which the pinches of dark humor are cerebral, pained and subdued. But what we have yet to see are the madcap, slapstick, West Berlin-made film comedies starring Dieter Hallervorden.
Hallervorden is a balding, big-nosed, wonderfully rubber-faced man, an ex-political cabaret actor who is the Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers and Red Skelton of West Germany.
Fifty-year-old Hallervorden also is West Germany`s biggest native box-office star, probably more popular in German-speaking countries (including Switzerland, Austria and East Germany) than Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds. He is recognized everywhere as ”Didi,” the lovable shlemeil character he brought to German television in the mid-1970s (”Didi in the Wild West,”
”Didi Wins the Game,” etc.) and then moved to an extraordinarily successful film series. Beginning in 1980 with ”Oh God, Harry” (the movies often have stilted English titles), there have been five ”Didi” pictures in five years.
”Didi and His Double” (1984), a ”Prince and the Pauper” variant in which Didi, an amiable Berlin tavern owner, switched identities with a heinous lookalike corporate head (also Hallervorden), enjoyed critical accolades along with financial success.
”Didi and the Vengeance of the Disinherited,” currently in West German first-run release, got less appreciative reviews, though Hallervorden extended himself by taking on seven roles, consciously emulating the Alec Guinness classic, ”Kind Hearts and Coronets” (1949). Still, the crowds are coming to the latest ”Didi” movie.
”Personally, I prefer the 1950s films of Jerry Lewis,” said a cab driver as he drove across West Berlin to UFA Studios, where Dieter
Hallervorden was shooting a television series.
But then he began to smile. ”Yes, Didi is funny. Though sometimes he is too funny.” The driver, a university philosophy graduate student, was expressing an opinion common among West German intellectuals; that is to acknowledge Hallervorden`s talents while not quite approving of his broad, exaggerated comedy.
It remains to be seen if Hallervorden will win new friends among the college-educated with his fall 1985 non-Didi TV situation comedy, ”The Nerd.”
Hallervorden is nervous himself, and excited, when we shake hands at UFA. He never has been interviewed for an American newspaper, and he wants to explain himself clearly. The problem is that he is shooting a scene for 1 of the 26 episodes of ”The Nerd.”
He is in costume–a suit with suspenders and a big bow tie–and he is on call every second. Every time he begins explaining about ”Didi” (”A lot of fans call me `Didi,` but between Dieter and Didi there is a difference,” he says), the assistant director interrupts and says he must be back on the set. Hallervorden offers a quick sketch of his TV character, the roguish Willie Bock.
”He`s charming but not very nice. He has no money. He`s very interested in horse racing. To get money, he`s chasing rich women. He`d like to touch women, but he never realizes his projects. At the last moment, things go wrong.”
The three-room set at UFA is meant to be Willie Bock`s landlady`s house. One room, a messy one with a single bed, is Willie`s domicile. ”He`s interested in the landlady, but she`s shy and not interested in him,”
Hallervorden says.
The scene being shot, on an outside courtyard, has been done hundreds of times in situation comedy. But that doesn`t stop it from being hilarious:
Willie Bock decides to get his beloved landlady jealous by courting a giddy, 40-ish blond.
The landlady doesn`t even notice, but the blond falls deliriously in love with Willie. She feeds him her best homemade dish, which Willie spits out when the blond`s back is turned. Then she talks and talks and talks. . . .
The camera holds on Hallervorden`s marvelously expressive face. While the blond blabs, Hallervorden begins to get sleepy. His eyelashes flutter like butterflies. His pupils bob up and down across his eyes, right to left. He starts to nod off, then jerks his head erect. Then the eyes haze, and the head falls to his chest.
”Willie!” the blond exclaims.
Hallervorden is up and awake and listening intently, in one-tenth of a second.
After four takes of this shot, Hallervorden has an anxiety attack. He explains to the director in German that an American journalist is here to interview him. There is no time. The director allows a 10-minute break, and Hallervorden races to his little office to talk. About Didi.
”He`s a guy from the street. You can find him everywhere, in every time. I like Didi. He`s a normal guy. Well, maybe he`s more crazy than the Didis in reality, but not that far.
”Children call me Didi, and they ask for autographs, and say, `Do something crazy.` I can`t fulfill their expectations, because Didi and Dieter are different. Personally, I have more intelligence than Didi. But it`s impossible to explain the difference to people between normal life and work. Everyone says, `Hello, it`s Didi.` Even when skiing in Austria or Switzerland, it`s impossible. People see Didi and laugh, expecting me to fall.
”But I ski very well. I skied two years ago in the Rocky Mountains, where I`m absolutely unknown, and they didn`t laugh at all. To spend holidays in a country where I`m not known is a little schizophrenic but it`s also a little like being in paradise.”
One reason for Hallervorden`s discomfort in being mixed up with Didi is his serious, intellectual background. He spent seven years in universities studying languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian) and journalism, and his early work as a theater actor included the German classics by Hebbel and Schiller.
He came from East Berlin in 1960, one year before the building of the Berlin Wall, and he brought with him from the East a knowledge of Brecht and a concern for political satire. In West Berlin, Hallervorden founded a well-known cabaret theater, Die Wuulmause, which specializes in topical humor based on the day`s political events.
But in the 1970s Hallervorden also emerged as popular television entertainer, who became most famous for dubbing the movie voice of American comedian Marty Feldman. ”People in Germany came to believe that Marty Feldman and I are the same person. For that reason, I stopped the synchronization,”
he says.
Hallervorden`s popularity in German-language countries is phenomenal. Even in East Germany, Communist soldiers break command by asking for his autograph, but tell him to drop it discreetly out of the window of his automobile. But what about success in the rest of the world?
There is a master plan, step-by-step, and it is being worked out by Hallervorden`s producer, Wolf Bauer, an ex-television political reporter in aviator glasses and a leather jacket.
”When I met Dieter and we came to have a close relationship, all my friends laughed at me,” Bauer says. ”They said of me, `He tried to change the world and now he is doing Didi movies.` But my interest after five years as a TV journalist was how to do entertainment. How to do comedies
differently.”
Bauer admits that the first ”Didi” films were ”cheap comedy” but
”Didi and the Double” was different, better, more international. He collaborated on the writing with an American, ”Happy Days” writer Walter Kempley, on updating the age-old idea–”Two people who look very similar but have very different positions.”
Bauer also concedes that the current ”Vengeance of the Disinherited” is ”half-a-step back” though there is a dubbed (badly) English-language version available for distribution to Canada, South Africa, Australia and, it is hoped, to theaters in the United States. ”We are trying in the United States, but we can only really succeed when we shoot in English, and with an English-language director,” Bauer says.
The next ”Didi” film, a German-French coproduction, will be shot in September in both of those languages. For 1986, Bauer projects a German-American ”Didi” coproduction, a $7 million film to be shot in English in Berlin and New York based on an American book he has purchased called ”Judy Judy Judy.”
The hope is for a much more sophisticated, more romantic ”Didi” story. Bauer mentions the kind of movie he imagines: Peter Sellers in ”Being There.”
”There is no comedian like Dieter,” Bauer says. ”I believe in his talents, and we have the same thoughts about the comedy levels we want to reach.” Hallervorden will shoot a TV special, ”Didi in Las Vegas,” at Caesar`s Palace, Las Vegas.
In anticipation of the Las Vegas show, and the English-language movie, Hallervorden has been working on smoothing his accent.
”I did some tryouts in a theater called the Outpost, for American citizens and American soldiers,” he says. ”The audience was able to understand my English. I say that my accent will work, and that my comedy is universal, made for Americans. But the great test will be my English-language movie.”
Hallervorden chooses to be philosophical about Didi`s future. ”I will not do Didi until the end of my life. And if I don`t realize success in France and North America, it`s not necessary for financial or psychological reasons,” he says with a smile. ”But to have Didi known everywhere? It would be fun.”
