Pipin, der Kurze: A weirdly charming look at a guy who finally snaps

If you are looking for something to watch tonight that doesn't require a lot of brain power but still feels like it has a soul, this is probably it. You’ll like it if you enjoy old-school physical comedy or if you’ve ever worked a service job and wanted to throw a stapler at someone. If you hate black-and-white movies or people acting a bit too much with their eyebrows, you might want to skip it.

Heinz Rühmann is the main reason to even click on this. He plays August Pipin, a cashier who is basically a **human robot** of politeness. He is so level-headed it actually starts to get a bit creepy about ten minutes in. He just sits there in his little cage, counting coins and nodding like a clockwork toy.

The movie is a bit like The Marriage Circle in how it handles small social awkwardness, but it’s much more about the "little man" getting squashed. I kept waiting for him to explode. You know that feeling when you're watching a pot of water and it just won't boil? That is the first half of this film.

One thing I noticed was the set design. The bank looks huge. Like, way too big for a regular town bank. It’s got these high ceilings and echoing floors that make Pipin look even smaller than he already is. Rühmann was never a tall guy, but this movie really leans into that, which I guess is why they called it "The Short."

There is this one scene where a customer is being incredibly rude about a small amount of money. Pipin just stands there with this **blank stare**. It’s the kind of stare you give your computer when it freezes. It went on for so long that I actually thought my player had skipped a frame or something. 🤨

The writing by Georg Zoch is okay, but you can tell they were still figuring out how to do sound movies properly. Sometimes the dialogue stops and everyone just stands around for a few seconds too long. It makes the rhythm feel a bit bumpy. It’s not as fast-paced as Radio-Mania, but it has its moments.

I really liked Charlotte Serda in this too. She has this very 1930s energy where she seems to be vibrating even when she's standing still. Her scenes with Rühmann are the only times the movie feels like it’s actually moving forward. The rest of the time it’s just people walking in and out of doors.

Speaking of doors, there are a lot of them. I think I counted five different doors in one office scene. It’s very much a "stage play" style of filmmaking. You can almost see where the actors are waiting in the wings to come on for their one line of dialogue.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pipin, der Kurze (1934) through its definitive frames.

The **fiasco** mentioned in the plot summary takes a while to get going. When it finally happens, it’s not some big action sequence. It’s just a lot of small things going wrong at once. A phone call goes bad, a person shows up who shouldn't be there, and Pipin’s brain basically just hits the *Alt+F4* button.

I found myself wondering about the extras in the background. There is a guy sitting at a desk behind Pipin for about twenty minutes who never actually writes anything. He just moves a pen over the same spot on a piece of paper. I couldn't stop watching him. He looked like he was having a very boring dream.

The music is... well, it's there. It’s that typical bouncy 1930s stuff that sounds like it belongs in a cartoon. It’s a bit much when things are supposed to be serious, but this movie never really tries to be serious anyway. It’s much lighter than something like Social Decay.

I think the ending is a bit rushed. It’s like they had 80 minutes of film and realized they only had 2 minutes left to fix the plot. Everything just kind of resolves itself because it has to. It’s a bit of a letdown after all the build-up of Pipin finally losing his mind.

Is it a masterpiece? No. But Rühmann has this way of making you care about him even when he’s being a total doormat. You want him to win. You want him to tell everyone to shut up. When he finally does, it feels *really* good, even if the movie around him is a bit clunky.

Some things I wrote down while watching:

• The lighting in the bank vault is actually pretty cool and moody.
• Why does everyone in 1934 wear a hat indoors? It looks exhausting.
• Hilde Hildebrand is always a win. She has a way of looking at people like they are bugs. 💅
• The scene with the telephone cord getting tangled felt very relatable.
• I missed the name of the guy playing the boss, but he had a very impressive mustache.

If you've seen The Madcap, you know this kind of vibe. It’s a bit of a time capsule. It shows a world that’s very stiff and formal, and then it just pokes fun at it for an hour or so.

I would say give it a chance if you find it on a streaming service or a dusty DVD. It’s not going to change your life, but it’ll make you feel better about your own job for a little bit. 🏦

The movie gets noticeably better once the "fiasco" starts because Rühmann finally gets to stop being a robot. His face goes through about fifty different expressions in five minutes. It’s impressive, really. I can't even make three different faces without my jaw hurting.

Anyway, it’s a solid little flick. Slightly imperfect, a bit slow in the middle, but worth it for the lead performance. Just don't expect it to be a high-speed chase or anything. It’s a movie about a bank cashier, after all.