The Innocent Country Girl: Weirdly charming, slightly broken German comedy

You probably haven't heard of The Innocent Country Girl unless you love digging through dusty Weimar-era archives. If you want quirky, stagey comedies where everyone gestures wildly, you will have a great time; otherwise, skip it. 🍿

The plot is as old as the hills. A simple village girl (Hilde Koller) gets her big shot at the glittering theater lights of Berlin.

It's the classic "country mouse in the big city" routine, but done with that specific frantic energy only German films of this era seem to have.

Honestly, some of it is pretty creaky. The camera just sits there for three minutes straight while two guys in suits argue about a contract.

But then Lucie Englisch shows up on screen and everything gets ten times brighter. She has this face that just screams "I'm about to ruin this entire dinner party," and she usually does.

I kept thinking about La segretaria privata while watching this. Both movies have that same obsession with the hustle of the big city and girls trying to make something of themselves.

Though, this one is much more chaotic and less polished.

There is this one incredibly strange scene where Ralph Arthur Roberts' character is trying to explain how a theater pulley system works. He goes on for so long that you can see the actress in the background literally glazing over.

It's a beautiful bit of accidental realism. 🎬

Also, the music in the print I saw was just... gone in some places? I think it was a sync issue, but it made the silence during a big argument scene feel incredibly awkward.

Like, you can hear a chair squeak and someone cough in the background. It's great.

The Good and the Weird Stuff

Here is what stuck out to me:

• Kurt Vespermann's eyebrows: They deserve their own billing. The man can express three different stages of panic just by twitching his forehead.
• The Berlin street shots: They look like they were filmed out of a moving cab window. It's shaky, dirty, and absolutely perfect.
• That one extra in the theater lobby: He stares directly into the lens for a solid five seconds while holding a coat. Someone forgot to edit that out.

If you've seen The Snob, you know how these German comedies love to poke fun at people trying to climb the social ladder.

This movie does the same thing, but with way less cynicism. It's almost sweet, even when the characters are being total idiots.

The writers, Walter Wassermann and Walter Schlee, clearly knew how to write a quick gag.

But they also didn't know how to end a scene, so a lot of them just... stop.

Like, a character will make a joke, everyone smiles, and then we immediately cut to a completely different room with no transition. It's jarring but kind of funny.

"Berlin is a monster, my dear. It eats little girls like you for breakfast."

That line from the theater manager is supposed to be scary, but he says it while eating a giant piece of cake.

It is hard to take him seriously when there is frosting on his chin. 🍰

Should you bother?

Look, it is not a masterpiece.

It is a messy, loud, and slightly broken piece of entertainment from a time when movies were still figuring themselves out.

But if you like that sort of thing, it is a very cozy way to spend an hour and a half.

Just don't expect it to change your life.