User Reviews

"Der Pauker" or "The Crammer" is a German black-and-white film from 1958 that runs for slightly under 90 minutes. It was written by Flatow and Hachfeld and I must say I am not familiar with any of these two. But I know director Axel von Ambesser, who worked on several other pretty well-known films also starring Heinz Rühmann. He is the star in this film that will soon have its 60th anniversary. This film is already from the later years of Rühmann's career and it is defining that during his era drama outweighed comedy in his roles. You could almost call this film here a dramatic approach to his really famous "Feuerzangenbowle". Rühmann is back to school playing a teacher once again. First he is in charge of really young pupils, but when another teacher surrenders, he decides to take over his class, a group of rebellious, exclusively male teenagers. And the entire films is basically about his communications with said class and how he tries to get in control of them, how some like him and some don't and how they generally communicate with each other. And also a little love story is brought in, which feels a bit random, but is still fun to watch thanks to Rühmann's charisma. And the same can be said about his scenes with Gert Froebe ("Goldfinger"), who plays a wrestler here. These scenes also feel out of place with the main plot, but are still fun to watch. I guess this film had a bit of a basic idea to be a German approach to some of James Dean's works from a couple years earlier when it comes to depicting teenage rebellion, but it completely falls short on this area and honestly it felt more like a "Pauker" film for the most part and it was difficult to take the drama seriously. Also the students all felt interchangeable I must say and the actors made no impact either. It is once again all about Rühmann. You can say about him that he plays similar characters on many occasions, but that is no problem as he beings once again a lot of wit and charisma to the role that I would say no (German) actor would have made this film as watchable as he did. He is also pretty much the only reason why I give this film a thumbs-up and recommend the watch. Check it out.

The late Ann Franks favorite comedian,Heinzy, portrays Dr.Seidel.A teacher for the elementary side of the public school. This is the same kind of school that was in the other Heinz Ruhmann comedy The Fruit bowl, 1945.In this German school it goes up to high school and the boys and girls are separated, just like in catholic school.These juveniles student teenagers even after school don't get together with the girls neither.They stick together and make trouble as most teenagers do, in which they pick on teacher Heinzy.The Elvis Presley of German plays one of the disruptive students in the High school area,Peter Kraus as Achim. He gets involved with the gang in their middle of the road rough stuff, but he always reform.Old German character actor stalwart,Ernest Fritz Furbringer,plays School inspector Wagner.Bruni Lobel ,who played one of the pilot students in Quax in Africa.Makes a second appearance with Heinzy, as a teacher also ,Selinski. Gold finger show up to,in his natural German accent, Gert Frobe, as Freddy a professional wrestler and Heinzys next door neighbor.The students start hating him so much they really pick on him. Chasing him with their small motor cycles.He goes to Freddy to teach him how to defend himself. To try to scare the boys Heinzy goes to the Auditorium to watch Freddy fighting , So he can come out with the fellow wrestlers to scare the high school boys from picking on him. He finally sets a fight with the students at the garbage dump.He wins twice,but fails in the third.The next day the students are giving him more respect.He decide to reform them by getting them to work at the garbage dump and fixing and creating a new car out of old steel.Peter Vogel,The son of Rudolph Vogel,plays Nervous student Eduard.Heinzy tries to teach Eddy how to drive but ends up in a wreck.Heinzies job is at stake now and as he is about to leave, he fines out Eddy is okay .he keeps his job and the students except him. 05/2/12