Best films are like love affairs. Some work right from the start, get you carried away, and while they last you just don't know what hit you. This is one of those films.
Montage, music, Art direction -those buildings! women's dresses and hairdos!, everything works towards the flow of the movie, never distracting from the main goal, that is entertain us with a couple of lovable delinquents. Love and sex are not what ties them together. Probably Gisela wanted to escape the dull routine of the factory, and Messieu wanted the thrill, as any psychopath. Roger Ebert already wrote better than anybody on why do we like people on the big screen that are not exactly role models, so I won't deal with that thorny issue here. I want you to watch this film and enjoy it as I did.
IMDb reviewer Ralfscheapthrill put it down perfectly: 'pre-68- melancholia and lust for life'. 2 more great reasons x watching this gem.
I've got a couple quibbles. Nadeshda Brennicke is too nice and attractive to be a factory worker, same goes x Henny Reents, probably Kommissar Fischer and her secretary too. It also happened in 'Monster' when, as in this film, when you saw the pictures of the real criminal, they were not alike. And the scene of the bank shooting, Gisela showing empathy x the victim, has so many troubles that it would be tiresome to mention them.
This film made me happier after having watched it, its powerful images remained on my memory the next days, and probably won't be forgotten. The seaside resort with the lady jumping out of the roofs as the quest for liberty, our own one, is my favourite scene. And Gisela clad as Banklady at the costume party from the factory. Or the proposal. Dialogues are also well crafted, the audience cracked at some jokes. Like the answer to the lady who lost her dog at the shooting, funny because Germans can be so formal when they want to, thus creating contrast. Or how Gisela replies to the marriage proposal in the last bank robbery. Secondary characters do have a role, like Gisela's unlucky 'boyfriend' and Fischer's grouchy boss, relentlessly effective at bullying the obsessive Kommissar.
This film is enjoyable like a bubble bum and well made as a Mercedes. I can't see why some critics didn't like it.
PS: Gisela's mum saying matter-of-factly what she has to do when Fischer raids their house only makes me wonder how Germans and a few other selected countries like Japan are so different from the rest of us, how they value honour and the social regard, the way they see crime as something that's bad, period.
