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7.7/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7.7/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Ein toller Einfall remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you love old-school German bedroom farces where people slam doors every five seconds, Ein toller Einfall is a pretty fun way to spend an hour and a half.
But if you get easily annoyed by characters who refuse to just explain a simple misunderstanding, you will probably want to throw your remote at the wall.
I ended up watching this because of Willy Fritsch, who is usually great, but he honestly feels like an afterthought here.
The real star is the sheer, exhausting speed of the whole thing.
The plot is so thin it is practically see-through.
Basically, there is a mix-up with hotel rooms, some girls, and a bunch of older men who look like they are about to have a heart attack.
It has that same breathless, slightly chaotic energy you find in early comedies like Mary Moves In, but with a lot more yelling in German.
Theo Lingen is in this, and he does his classic routine where he looks incredibly stressed while holding a tray.
I swear, nobody does panicked servitude quite like him.
There is this one scene where three different people try to hide in the same wardrobe, and you can practically hear the director screaming "faster, faster!" from behind the camera.
The wardrobe itself looks like it was made of cardboard and might collapse at any second.
I also noticed this one extra in the hotel lobby who just keeps picking up the same telephone, looking shocked, and putting it down.
He does this about four times in three minutes, and nobody ever explains why he is so worried about that phone.
The set design is weirdly modern, too.
Everything has these sharp, Bauhaus-y angles that do not really match the goofy, old-fashioned plot.
It feels like someone set up a silly stage play inside a very expensive, cold art gallery.
At one point, Paul Hörbiger shows up and just completely steals the show by playing a guy who is incredibly drunk.
His character does not make any sense in the grand scheme of things, but his stumbling around is the best part of the second half.
The whole thing wraps up so fast you might actually miss the resolution if you blink.
Not that the resolution matters, anyway.
It is just one of those movies where everyone suddenly smiles because the runtime is over and they ran out of film.
It is not a masterpiece, but it made me laugh more than once. Just do not expect anything deep.
IMDb —
1918
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