Roland Klick – Jimmy Orpheus (1966)

After three short films, Roland Klick finally wanted to shoot a real feature-length film in 1966. It almost worked out with that. But then the production company Atlas Film went bankrupt during the shooting of Jimmy Orpheus. That’s why this 50-minute film isn’t Klick’s originally planned film, but only his torso. Jimmy Orpheus also clearly shows this. And it does the film astonishingly good! This is a similarly successful creative accident as Jean-Luc Godard’s feature film debut Breathless, which came to the cinemas six years earlier. It was finished, as planned by Godard, but should be shortened afterwards at the instigation of the producer. Thus Godard radically snipped away everything that was not absolutely necessary to understand the plot – and invented the jump cut in this way.

Jimmy Orpheus is also visibly inspired by the Nouvelle Vague. In fact, I know of no other German film that breathes the fresh spirit of this French film revolution as much as this film. The title-giving Jimmy Orpheus is a construction worker and aimless drifter in nocturnal Hamburg, actually named Christoph and played by Klaus Schichan. He ghosts at night quite haphazardly over the Hamburg neighbourhood, flipps, drinks, goes to a concert, plays billiards, visits a strip shed, drinks even more, staggers, recovers, meets a girl (Ortrud Beginnen) who turns out to be a very easy girl a little later, but Jimmy or Christopher or whatever, it doesn’t matter, because suddenly he has a goal and his life has a meaning: He just has to get together with this woman and everything will be fine. That´s what HE thinks…
– Gregor Torinus – hardsensations.com

940MB | 49mn 35s | 720×542 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/1CA9E5CDBBA5409/Jimmy_Orpheus.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English