A “Stundenhotel” is a hotel that can be rented by the hour, similar to the Japanese Love Hotels. The film Das Stunden-Hotel von St. Pauli is also known as Hotel by the Hour though, hand on heart, I am not sure if it actually ever saw an English language release.
It was the last “proper” St Pauli film by Rolf Olsen with Curd Jürgens. (One more was to follow in that series but as we will see not a lot was actually set in St Pauli).
It also was the only one in the series not to feature Heinz Reincke as the trusted side buddy.
Surely, with a title like that what could go wrong?
Also for once Jürgens would play a police commissioner so certainly there are promises galore of endless trash with strong Krimi connotations and a star who pledges to shake up the seedy streets of St Pauli.
And it even starts with a razzia in a brothel and the killing of a policeman trying to stop an addict from breaking into a pharmacy.
Alas….
Quickly afterwards we discover that Jürgens’ Kommissar Canisius is a widower living together with his adult son Peter (Manfred Tümmler) who unlike his uppity father is involved with the APO, the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, the extra-parliamentary opposition, a predecessor of the Antifa that originated out of the student movements of the late 1960s.
They have a heated argument about Peter joining a protest march. Canisius believes that this protest is just organised by “Radaubrüder” (trouble makers) and Peter storms off proclaiming: “I was always quite proud of my father, but I'm afraid that now I only have an old granddad”…. just to then get seriously injured and taken to a hospital fighting for his life.
Cue: Drastic real life operation scenes!
And poor old dad is not allowed to visit his son as he needs to also work the night shift even though he already had just finished an 18-hour work day.
Kurt Georg has a bigger role than usual and plays Canisius’ boss who reminds him that duty is more important than family obligations. He also is ignorant of the death of Canisius’ wife five years prior and intermittently throughout the production appears to be missing the good old times a wee bit too much.
So yes, this is clearly yet another production in which Olsen mixes melodrama and soap opera elements together with the trashier sides of the plot.
And that melodramatic focus increases even more once we encounter the eponymous love hotel and the film turns into a bargain basement version of Grand Hotel.
Do we get nudity and hookers in there with their clients?
Of course… especially with the lovely Andrea Rau (from Daughters of Darkness) and her campy old git, a self proclaimed “aesthete”, who first insists on draping her with flowers before himself dressing up in a cheap devil’s costume.
But for a seedy love hotel we also get all kinds of other guests and their problems including a family with little girl!
There’s a married woman with her much younger lover being surprised by her husband, carrying a gun and reminding her of her responsibilities towards their children.
A gay couple (“my nephew and I”) where the younger man resorts to blackmailing his older partner.
The drug addict who killed the policeman also tries to find refuge and suffers cold turkey.
A teenage couple tries their first time.
A young woman attempts suicide after her very old looking student lover rejects her when she announces that she is pregnant.
A young taxi driver and occasional pimp insists on being married before getting intimate with his hot Eastern European housekeeper girl friend but needs money for that so she resorts to robbing drunk johns.
A seemingly frigid woman occasionally checks in to the establishment in order to spy on couples getting laid.
And through it all the receptionist in perfect livrée (Walter Buschhoff) has his hands in everything from selling drugs to sex magazines.
Well, you get the drift.
Lots of life stories that all take place in a single location.
In fact for the first half of this film Curd Jürgens only features sparingly.
It’s only when the gay rent boy gets stabbed to death in his bathroom (which strangely enough seems to have had an open connecting door to the public hotel hallway), that the police get involved. Secrets are being revealed. And Jürgens is never far from a sophisticated medicinal glass of cognac while staying in regular contact with his son’s hospital.
This is a strange film, part trash jumping on the contemporary sex film wagon, part soap opera, part social drama.
And truth be told, its political stance is just as all over the place.
On the one hand we even have taxi drivers complaining about police violence during demonstrations, on the other hand demonstrators are presented as being young hotheads. Through it all Jürgens who, despite the initial argument with his son, is seen as the overall understanding centrist haven of peace who can understand both sides and attempts to navigate between them.
He is the father figure who talks sense into a young man who abandoned his girlfriend when she got pregnant and the guy people can genuinely turn to for sympathetic advice.
He is also driven by a strong sense of duty, order and an overarching belief into the benevolence of the Status Quo.
The criminalisation of homosexuality in West Germany was only completely abolished in 1994. 1969, the year before this film was shot, however, saw a partial decriminalisation between consenting adults over the age of 21.
And yet again, we see this represented in a strange mishmash.
Yes, isn’t it great that gay adults can now be open about their sexual preferences?
But aren’t they also all not just silly and sometimes dangerous pervs?
As so often in a Rolf Olsen production it all culminates in a - literally - explosive finale with conveniently placed dynamite with added threats of violence against a child. (Seriously, what is it with Olsen and children?)
One of the main highlights of this film is seeing the wonderful Brigitte Mira as a constantly interfering busybody and homophobic cleaning lady. I couldn’t help but see this role as a clear precursor to her part as an elderly cleaning lady in love with a young “guest worker” in Fassbinder’s Angst Essen Seele Auf/Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974).
To be continued….
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