Walter Bockmayer

This enchantingly satirised tearjerker about Vulture-Wally won’t let any punster down. Bockmayer transforms the alpine romance about a Tirolese farmer’s daughter rebelling against a match chosen by her father and instead following the voice of her heart into a pun-heavy and gaudily funny mixture of slapstick, musical and folk theatre. A Brigitte Bardot of suburbia, a fat dwarf and a beanpole are tremendously lifelike comic book characters, professionals of horseplay. One experiences the most jarring version of Bavaria that ever existed, because Bockmayer intentionally trivialises the heart-wrenching Heimat-gothic-love-drama still further by elevating amateur dramatics to an art form.