Die Feuerzangenbowle (1944) - film review

Four old men, gathered around a steaming punch bowl, reminisce over their happy school days.  A younger, middle-aged, man joins them.  His name is Johannes Pfeiffer, a successful writer who, as a boy, was taught at home and so missed out on the dubious advantages of a normal school education.  Persuaded by the four other men, Johannes has himself enrolled in a state school.  Masquerading as a school boy some twenty years his junior, he wastes no time accumulating the experiences which were deprived him in childhood – most of which involve playing cruel practical jokes on his teachers…

Die Feuerzangenbowle – the film for which director Helmut Weiss is best known – is one of the all-time comedy classics of German cinema, a cult film that has an enduring appeal.  It is a film which anyone who has experienced a conventional Western education will instantly engage with, a film that is has become an essential part of any university education in modern Germany.

Based on a popular novel by Heinrich Spoerl, Die Feuerzangenbowle stands as one of the best and funniest films about schooling, thanks to some masterfully realised comic sequences.  Given the time at which the film was made (at the height of World War II), it comes across as a surprisingly subversive film, with authority figures represented as vain fools who are an easy object of ridicule.   Some critics have argued that the film also contains elements that promote Nazi ideology, implying the film is more morally ambiguous than it appears at first sight.

Made at the state-managed UFA studios, its director Helmut Weiss is reputed to have dragged out the film’s production for as long as possible to reduce the likelihood of his cast and crew being drafted into the armed services.  The film was initially suppressed by the German Education Secretary (but only briefly), through fears that it showed the teaching profession in a bad light.  When the film was released (after a favourable viewing by Herman Göring), it was hugely successful, and has since occupied a prominent place in German culture.  The film’s title refers to an alcoholic drink that is traditionally drunk in Germany at Christmas and the New Year – often whilst watching this film!

© James Travers 2007

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