Chapeau Claque

Top Hat

Hanno Giessen is 33, the last scion of a hat manufactory in Berlin. After the firm, specialized in top hats, goes bankrupt, he devotes himself to a life of indolence. He engages a camera crew to record for posterity his willfully unproductive days in his Grunewald villa, which is full of various collections and antiques. His established routines in splendid isolation, in which he sees at most delivery people and a few friends, come unstuck when a young woman moves in with him, who nonchalantly and unclothed shatters his complacency…

Featuring appearances by Kreuzberg bohemians like Wolfgang Neuss, the film made in Ulrich Schamoni's genuinely untamed suburban homestead is a jocular home movie. In the developing leisure society of the 1970s, a social dropout postulates an anarchistic "right to idleness". This cinematic summer fantasy with melancholy overtones and satirical potshots at the contemporary "man of action" euphoria was deemed by the ratings board (FSK) to be a serious "incitement to do nothing", and prohibited for young audiences in 1974.

Source: 74. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)