I Often Think of Piroschka
(Ich denke oft an Piroschka)
With Liselotte Pulver, Gunnar Möller.
West Germany, 1955, 35mm, black & white, 96 min.
German with English subtitles.
This German Heimatfilm situated not in Germany but in the Hungarian provinces presents beautiful landscapes, rustic customs, and village festivities as it relates the story of a German student who spends his summer holidays with a Hungarian family and falls in love with Piroschka, daughter of the local railway stationmaster. Comedic circumstances arise from the cultural differences between the German student and his Hungarian hosts as well as the student’s unfamiliarity with rural life. Director of the most successful German comedies of the period, Hoffman was especially adept at using language for comic effects. The Swiss-born actress Liselotte Pulver had worked in several films before, but Piroschka was her breakthrough, and she became one of the most beloved stars of the German popular cinema of the 1950s.