Ich denke oft an Piroschka

I was expecting your typical colourful, sickly-sweet, inane, trashy, multicoloured, forget-the-war, 1950ies eyecandy. In fact I only saw this because I'd read in an article that in German carnival, a Piroschka costume is as popular a costume for females as pirate, cowboy or Indian costumes are for men.

In other words, I wasn't exactly bracing myself for a staggering cinematic experience.

What I got was a captivating, timeless, epic and utterly charming love story. Naive, yes. Construed, you bet. Psychedelically coloured, hell yeah. A fairy tale. But one that knocked me dead. Lilo Pulver, a Swiss German who already has a hard a time hiding her Swiss German accent, affects a silly Hungarian patois, but she more than makes up for it by creating the phenotype of a sassy, vervy ingénue who has to fight her mundane "blonde poison" adversary (Wera Frydtberg) for the love of doe-eyed German student dreamboat (apparently) Andreas (Gunnar Möller).

This movie is an enormous accomplishment of director Kurt Hoffman (I know, I'd never heard of this guy either). Everything is just perfectly in place, spot-on. There are 999 ways of getting this movie wrong, just one way of getting it right, and Hoffman nailed it.

Girls, if you ever wondered "what men want", forget Cosmo and Sex In The City -- here's the blueprint.

A young summer student spends some time in a Hungarian country side nowhere place with the easily remembered name Hodmezövasarheli... something, whatever it was. There he falls in love with young and innocent Piroschka, daughter of the local railway station-master.

However, a more experienced woman catches sight of the young student. She invites him to come and see her in town. There he soon discovers the difference between the honest love of Piroschka and love for pure selfish reasons.

When he returns to look for Piroschka she is no longer to be found and when he must return home he can only keep her as a cherishable memory.

Try to pronounce it - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta. Yes, that's the name of the place where the young German student Andreas finds his Piroschka. It's a very small railway station in the southeast of Hungary in the glossy 20's. Rural and idyllic.

Liselotte Pulver is lovely as Piroschka, the 17 years old daughter of station master Gustav Knuth. It's a movie full of joy. Beautiful and charming. It really makes you happy when watching it. Music, csàrdàs and feast in a true Hungarian way. But perhaps it's a bit too grievous when it comes to the final part, when Andreas has to leave, when his Hungarian summer is over. He shall never return to Piroschka - just living with sweet memories of her and a wonderful summer in - Hódmezövásárhelykutasipuszta...

In 1925 a young german student comes to a small town in Hungary for vacation.

He falls in love with the young daughter (Piroschka) of the railwaystation officer who herself uninhibitedly loves him.

Complications arise as he already had started a relation with a german girl shortly before arriving in Hungary.

He has to decide and goes all-in for Piroschka, but being hurt she refuses him.

On the final day of his vacation she finally meets him again and goes into huge troubles to keep him in Hungary, but the vacation is over .... (I won't spoiler the end).

This is told in a very warm, romantic and lighthearted way, as the story is narrated by the student himself, but 30 years later, as he remembers Piroschka (hence the title). The movie is very open about that his memories are - well - veiled by romantic interpretation, as mostly the visuals don't match his voice-over narration.

Matching the light-hearted and naive tone of his memories, the movie itself is kept simple, but in a very clever way.

Acting is good, but Liselotte Pulver stands out as the young, full-blooded Piroschka, with her face really reflecting the force of her emotions. She plays for laughs but beneath that you always see the truth shining through.

The movie is the greatest statement of young, uninhibited love and devotion you will find. It's funny, sad warm and overall pleasant.

I wonder if the movie was released in Hungary and how it was received there as it is overall very positive about the Hungarians.

And as the movie is based on the real recollections of the author, I wonder (like so many) whatever happened to Piroschka.

If you've ever fallen in love as a student on vacation with a local girl, this is the movie for you.

This review is based on the viewing of a restored print in 2022.

This is the story of first love between a German college student and a young Hungarian girl in a tiny Hungarian town with an enormously long name. Told from the college student's memories, the early 1900s events are told with the purity of innocent romance known to all who have felt that warm feeling of the heart when falling in love for the first time.

The two young people are soul mates that somehow were not meant to be happy together. Knowing that they will never find another true love like this, each is left only with the eternal memories of that one wonderful summer.

A young Lieselotte Pulver is perfectly cast as the sweet and innocent Piroschka, with Karl-Heinz Boehm as the young student visiting from Germany. The gentle Gustav Knuth plays Piroschka's father, who has the privilege of shouting out the town's extremely long and difficult to pronounce name whenever a train arrives. Other well-known actors of the day make up an effective supporting cast.

The use of brilliant color and the inclusion of an impressive score makes this a true cinema gem. If you enjoy a sweet love story with the charm of the simple life of times past, you're going to like this picture!