'Zu Befehl, Herr Unteroffizier' is a very bad German comedy. The title translates as 'You Give the Orders, Mr Noncom', and the rest of the movie is just about as hilarious. The fact that any German production company was making army comedies AT ALL in 1932 really gives one pause. Proceed at your own risk.
The very minimal action is set shortly before the Great War, as the Germans had nothing to laugh about in that conflict. Ralph Arthur Roberts plays a middle-aged businessman. At the start of the movie, he sacks one of his employees. I'm laughing already. Then it turns out that the businessman is in the army reserves (as a private), and he's just been recalled for active duty. The hilarity mounts. Next, it turns out that his sergeant in the reserve unit is the man he's just sacked. My sides are splitting.
It gets worse. The businessman has a shrewish wife, played at top volume by Ida Wüst. (And she supplies this movie's Wüst performance.) When he went into the reserves, he told his wife he was an officer. Now his wife shows up at the army base, and he doesn't want her to know he lied about his rank. From this point, the whole movie degenerates into a sitcom: specifically, the sitcom cliché about the underling who tries to impress a visitor by pretending he's the boss, and tries to persuade everyone else to treat him accordingly.
The photography in this film is excellent, especially in the exterior sequences. But I didn't laugh once. Footage of German infantrymen drilling in 1932 does not provoke me to laughter. I'll rate this movie 1 point out of 10.
