"Hinter den 7 Gleisen" ("Behind the 7 Tracks"), directed by Kurt Früh (1959), is the most beloved Swiss movie of all times. It is the story of the three clochards Dürst, Barbarossa and Clown. They live in an old railway shed amidst in the rails of Zurich Main Railway Station, basically spending their time with stealing and drinking. However, everything changes when Inge, a young German girl, is seeking refuge in order to give birth. The three clochards are helping her wherever they can. By aid of the barrier-attendant Mrs. Herzog, she delivers a baby-boy. The three clochards are going to work now in order to support mother and child. Barbarossa (Max Haufler who worked with Orson Welles in Kafka's "Proces") even proposes to her. Meanwhile, the young engineer Hartmann finds Inge and her child an falls for her. Clown, Dürst and Barbarossa find out who the father of the child is. They force him into the shed and clear things up in their own rather rude way. He swears not having known that Inge was pregnant and invites her, the child and the clochards to his parents. However, Inge is not convinced that the clochards would make a good reputation. So, she asks the engineer Hartmann to come with her and to tell the parents that it was him who gave her refuge, but he refuses. Now, the clochard Dürst (the unforgotten Zarli Carigiet) suggests that he fakes the engineer, telling the child's fathers parents that it was him and his wife (namely the barrier-attendant Mrs. Herzog) who were looking for Inge and the child. And so they are doing it, the clochard Duerst playing the role of the real engineer Hartmann and the barrier-attendant Mrs. Herzog playing the role of his wife. However, when they sit together with the parents, suddenly, the real engineer Hartmann comes trough the door, not realizing that he is just about to ruin Inge's future. Everybody has to watch the wonderful end of this movie that is a very strange and subtle mixture of brutal reality iced with fairy-tale-like irony. It is a shame that this movie is still not available on international DVD. Germany has their Murnau society, Italy has their Pasolini society, France has their Abel Gance society, but where is the Swiss Kurt Früh society?
2 Reviews
A "modern" Three Magi-Story
semiotechlab-658-9544431 March 2010
The official version about Kurt Früh's films "Bäckerei Zürrer" (1957), "Hinter den Sieben Gleisen" (1959) and "Es Dach Ueberem Chopf" (1961) is, according to Werner Wider's reference work "Der Schweizer Film" (2 vols., Zurich 1981, 1989) that Früh's work stands under strong until copying influence from Italian Neo-realism, especially from the movies by Pietro Germi (1914-1974). As it seems, nobody could and still can imagine that Switzerland had once a film director, who was capable of having own ideas and being being able to transport them into movies whose quality can be compared to those of the surrounding states at the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties. Here I propose a quite new interpretation: Früh calls his movies explicitly "Märchenfilme" (fairy-tale movies): The plot-line follows not only causality, but wonders are used as stereotypes. Amidst of the rails in Zurich main station, three old bums (Clochards) live in a shabby hut. One evening, when they come home, they here someone crying in their dwelling. They find a young German (foreign) mother who is just about giving birth. By aid of their friend, an older gate-woman, the baby is delivered. - Did Früh here not simply give a modern version of the Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar Story, the Three King or Three Magi story in the gospel by St. Matthew 2? But so artistically disguised that nobody ever came to this disclose the background in more than half a century? The oldest of the three Kings has been named "Balthasar": he had a big dark beard. In Kurt Früh's version his name is "Barbarossa" and his beard is red. In the tradition, it has been Emperor Barbarossa who has brought the relics of the three Saint Kings in their definitive place. If this interpretation is correct, then Inge and her child stand for Mary and the newborn Christ. He, however, did not enter this world in a railroad hut, but at least in an animal-stable. An interesting non-parallel between the two versions is that, not untypical for Früh, his "Mary" (Inge) has been left by the child-father, she is does not searching for an asylum together with her Joseph, but attempts suicide by running in front of an engine. Although the three Clochards, unlike the three Magi, do not come to visit the new-born child and crowd it by gifts, they start to work for mother and child and bring home their newly purchased items on every payday. An interesting detail: As we learn later in the movie, the father of Inge's child is the son of a producer of paper-products (stationary). We know, that paper is made from wood, and Joseph in the Bible was a carpenter.
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