The German word 'lumpen' -- as in 'lumpen proletariat' -- has no precise English equivalent. It would translate somewhere between 'people of the labouring class' and 'people who don't matter'. This film's title 'Lumpenball' refers to a social event -- a ball -- held by and for such people. 'Lumpenball' was released in Germany just a week before Lon Chaney died in California, yet somehow this movie feels like something from back in the Mack Sennett era.
I found much of this film to be deeply embarrassing, since it's firmly mired in a subclass of marital comedy which is now very archaic: the concept that husband and wife are automatically adversaries; that a husband can only ever have a good time by sneaking out on his wife, and that it's a wife's duty to prevent her husband from having fun. This short of mindset belongs firmly in the era of Maggie and Jiggs, Laurel and Hardy, 'The Honeymooners', 'The Flintstones' and Donald McGill's seaside postcards. However, SOME of the above are still quite funny (I'm not talking about YOU, Fred and Barney), so perhaps I'm being too harsh towards 'Lumpenball'. Yet the fact is that I didn't laugh very often while watching this comedy ... and, when I did, I felt slightly embarrassed that I WAS laughing.
Here's the gripping narrative: Doktor Rodenburg Gerhard is an old married man, so of course his wife Eva is a shrew. Their daughter Pauline is married to Amadeus Krause ... and I felt that the name 'Amadeus Krause' was the funniest joke in this movie. Frau Krause is a shrew just like her mother, so the two husbands are allies in their misfortune. The two men meet two gaudy young females named Fiffi and Lola who are allegedly 'dancing girls' (says this film's dialogue), but that's clearly a euphemism for something else. The husbands flirt with these girls, who invite them to the Lumpenball. But in order to get the Lumpenball rolling, Rodenburg and Amadeus will have to get past the Gerhard wife and the Krause spouse.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Gerhard fakes a telegram from his very respectable friend Herr Doktor Wiegand (an attorney), claiming an emergency that requires the husbands' immediate attention. They rush off, leaving their wives at home. Then a visitor arrives: the real Dr Wiegand, unaware that his name has been used as a pretext. The wives quickly rumble that their husbands are up to no good.
At the Lumpenball, the husbands switch clothes with two cross-talk comedians named Schluck and Priem, and likewise don the comedians' stage make-up. When the wives show up, they spot Schluck and Priem wearing masks (and the husbands' clothes), and assault them with the German equivalent of rolling pins. The joint gets raided, and afterward the husbands have the gleeful satisfaction of seeing their wives publicly exposed as having attended the Lumpenball, whilst the husbands had their fun without any penalty.
I well and truly felt as if there were mothballs coming out of this movie, and the only novelty of the situation (for me, at least) was that it was being staged within the German culture rather than that of Britain's Whitehall farces or American vaudeville. When this movie was released in 1930, Hitler was just getting warmed up. I wonder if these sorts of shenanigans were still being enjoyed by the German working-class just a couple of years later. My rating for this lump of balls 'Lumpenball': just 4 out of 10. If you want to see a much funnier movie with a similar premise, watch Stan and Ollie in 'Fraternally Yours'.
I found much of this film to be deeply embarrassing, since it's firmly mired in a subclass of marital comedy which is now very archaic: the concept that husband and wife are automatically adversaries; that a husband can only ever have a good time by sneaking out on his wife, and that it's a wife's duty to prevent her husband from having fun. This short of mindset belongs firmly in the era of Maggie and Jiggs, Laurel and Hardy, 'The Honeymooners', 'The Flintstones' and Donald McGill's seaside postcards. However, SOME of the above are still quite funny (I'm not talking about YOU, Fred and Barney), so perhaps I'm being too harsh towards 'Lumpenball'. Yet the fact is that I didn't laugh very often while watching this comedy ... and, when I did, I felt slightly embarrassed that I WAS laughing.
Here's the gripping narrative: Doktor Rodenburg Gerhard is an old married man, so of course his wife Eva is a shrew. Their daughter Pauline is married to Amadeus Krause ... and I felt that the name 'Amadeus Krause' was the funniest joke in this movie. Frau Krause is a shrew just like her mother, so the two husbands are allies in their misfortune. The two men meet two gaudy young females named Fiffi and Lola who are allegedly 'dancing girls' (says this film's dialogue), but that's clearly a euphemism for something else. The husbands flirt with these girls, who invite them to the Lumpenball. But in order to get the Lumpenball rolling, Rodenburg and Amadeus will have to get past the Gerhard wife and the Krause spouse.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Gerhard fakes a telegram from his very respectable friend Herr Doktor Wiegand (an attorney), claiming an emergency that requires the husbands' immediate attention. They rush off, leaving their wives at home. Then a visitor arrives: the real Dr Wiegand, unaware that his name has been used as a pretext. The wives quickly rumble that their husbands are up to no good.
At the Lumpenball, the husbands switch clothes with two cross-talk comedians named Schluck and Priem, and likewise don the comedians' stage make-up. When the wives show up, they spot Schluck and Priem wearing masks (and the husbands' clothes), and assault them with the German equivalent of rolling pins. The joint gets raided, and afterward the husbands have the gleeful satisfaction of seeing their wives publicly exposed as having attended the Lumpenball, whilst the husbands had their fun without any penalty.
I well and truly felt as if there were mothballs coming out of this movie, and the only novelty of the situation (for me, at least) was that it was being staged within the German culture rather than that of Britain's Whitehall farces or American vaudeville. When this movie was released in 1930, Hitler was just getting warmed up. I wonder if these sorts of shenanigans were still being enjoyed by the German working-class just a couple of years later. My rating for this lump of balls 'Lumpenball': just 4 out of 10. If you want to see a much funnier movie with a similar premise, watch Stan and Ollie in 'Fraternally Yours'.
