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It seems to come in fashion to criticize every single Tatort episode. Recently, an already post-produced Swiss Tatort has been revoked by a newly engaged commission member of Swiss TV - the Tatort has not been broadcast and she appeared in two subsequent numbers of the Swiss newspapers, photo included. The newest German Tatort with Mehmet Kurtulus has been praised by all female critics (faqlling for the masculinity of "Batu" which is sufficient perhaps for aftershave-advertisements), although not one Tatort episode of the last years has reached such a low percentage of audience. The problem is not, as suggested, the overall-use of stereotypes: it was simply superficial, stupid and boring. As for the Austrian Tatort - No. 3 in the community of the 3-nations-cooperative work -, the alleged use of stereotypes was again underlined. Since it is well known that Germans like to laugh about Austrians, the question rises who it is here who uses stereotypes. Austrian Tatorts are part of this gigantic series since the beginning (1971), when one could enjoy the unforgettable Oberinspektor Marek. Leading other Krimis have come from Austria, Commissar Rex and Kottan, to mention only the most famous ones. But, more important, Austria has since a long time surpassed both Switzerland and Germany in producing high-level non-Hollywood-style movies. As it is well known: in Switzerland, movies which attract international attention don't exist anymore since a very long time. Almost as deplorable is that the German output of high-quality movies has almost reached the zero-point in the last years. Connoisseurs know thus since a long time that good German speaking movies come from Austria. That this is not only like that since yesterday, the huge Hoanzl-collection of several hundred high-top Austrian movies since the silent time proves in splendor. I am not an Austrian, but when Austrian movies are falsely criticized, then I diagnose Sour Grapes.

According to the very wide-spread Communist Swiss film history by Wider and Aeppli ("Der Schweizer Film 1929-1964", 2 vols. Zurich: Limmat Verlag 1981), "(Kurt) Früh's work merged soon into clumsy goofing-off (Unbeholfene Blödeleien)", vol. 1, p. 21. According to the same authors, "The 42nd Heaven" is characterized by "dilettante use of the film language" (p. 25). The final verdict stands on p. 511: The 42nd Heaven be "one of the worst movies that have surely ever been made".

In reality, this first Swiss musical is a wild Pot-Pourri that subsumes elements from Vaudeville to Dadaism, and from Surrealism to the early phase of Concretism. It has been made in two different versions, a Swiss and a German one, and in both there is a cast of the best actors of this genre that Früh could wish and for him even later generations envied him. Many songs have become independent, e.g. the Butcher-Song of Margrit Rainer. The idea that Wendelin Pfannenstiel has won a fortune from an uncle in Australia who became rich by breeding kangaroos strives the genial. Clearly surrealist episodes like Pfannenstiel walking with his bear "August" along the shores of Lake Zürich have become as famous as certain paintings of Salvador Dali. Had Früh already his earlier movies ("Hinter Den Sieben Gleisen", "Es Dach Über Em Chopf") clearly declared as fairy-tales, he takes in "The 42nd Heaven" the last consequences and abolished every social angles by which his forms stories were still bound in "reality". The typical old-town-Zürich background shrinks into a mere decor (the episodes could be played everywhere), there is no homogeneous use of Swiss dialects anymore (Margrit Rainer speaks Zürich German, her "husband" Peter W. Staub,like Roderer, broad St. Galler German. The Bürgermeister (mayor) of Zürich speaks Bernese dialect (!),and Wendelins best friend Alfons speaks Basel German. Moreover, most parts of the narration are dissolved into songs which renders the story a specific lightness that we find back perhaps only in Jacques Demy's wonderful and miraculous works. A whole new genre for the Swiss movie has been invented by Kurt Früh.

This movie is in at least two ways extraordinary for a Swiss movie: First, there is Sigfrit Steiner (1906-1988) in the main role. After having had a big number of smaller, albeit characteristic roles in Swiss movies (e.g. in "It happened in broad daylight", 1958), Steiner worked mostly in German and international movies, e.g. together with Richard Burton, Vanessa Redgrave or Max Von Sydow, and it was not before 1976, when Kurt Gloor cast him for the Swiss movie "Die Plötzliche Einsamkeit Des Konrad Steiner", when Swiss film makers started to remember him: the man with the face like a landscape and the characteristic St. Gallen dialect accent in foreign films.

Second, Kurt Gloor. Bad tongues say that Switzerland had since 1897 only two great film makers, the first names of both are "Kurt" (Kurt Früh: 1915-1979; Kurt Gloor: 1942-1997). In addition, Kurt Gloor studied with Kurt Früh directing and dramaturgy. However, while Früh sublimated mental processes into spiritual processes, Gloor was a type who had to go to the bitter end of everything that seemed unjust to him. And many things did. Besides the heart-braking story of the 75 years old shoemaker at Froschaugasse in Zurich who looses first his wife and then his workshop, Gloor treated various controversial subjects in his films, e.g. "The first days in the life of a Methadon-baby", "With one foot in the Beyond", or he showed the life of right-less foreign laborers in Switzerland who dwell 6 persons in 2 rooms. Very famous became his action during which he appeared one nice day with his whole film crew before the Federal Parliament Building. Gloor was a man of extraordinary talent and outstanding courage, but I also remember that day in 1997, shortly before my birthday, when the casket with him inside was carried out of my neighboring house. As it appeared, Gloor could not stand the enormous pressure on him anymore, he, who had believed in the revolutionary force of film. At that day, I thought: By filming only people who stand in the shadow-side of life, you cannot yourself stand in the sun; and nobody can stand his whole life in the shadow. Quite differently, "Konrad Steiner" is not a depressing movie, but rather a movie with an astonishing portion of hope, and it is full of unexpected non-schoolbook wisdom, like f.ex. when Steiner says to his half a century younger social working girlfriend: "Now, I understand, why we cannot life together: because we don't have the same future". However, if one listens very attentively, the movie is also full of bitter irony - and stands so in the best tradition of that strange crossing of Tragedy and Farce that is so characteristic for Swiss movies (and not only for the movies).