1POPULAR CINEMA

sence of man. His performance encourages identification with the experience
of self-abandonment, but it also speaks to more hidden sadistic and
masochistic impulses released by such a spectacle of disempowerment. For
that reason, the drunken scenes are usually built around the tension between
the character who, for a brief moment, falls apart and “loses it” and
the actor who skillfully performs these effects. Beginning with Laughing
Heirs, which introduced the drunken theme through its silly story of a
family-owned vineyard and a troubling inheritance with an abstinence
clause, Rühmann’s comic style hinges on such calculated moments of transgression
and the underlying assumptions about male identity that make
them both possible and necessary. Acknowledging the close ties between intoxication
and visual pleasure, one reviewer even referred to this early Rühmann
comedy from 1933 as an “exclusive brand from the sparkling wine
cellar of German humor.” 33
Many of these points can be developed further through an extended
drinking scene from Paradies der Junggesellen (Paradise of Bachelors,
1939). As in The Three from the Filling Station, Rühmann belongs to a group
of friends who derive much of their confidence from the rituals of homosocial
behavior, including a professed disdain for women. On one occasion,
the twice-divorced marriage registrar and his two bachelor friends get terribly
drunk on beer and schnapps during a reunion dinner for the crew of
the torpedo boat Victoria. Their exuberant song-and-dance number soon
gives way to the obligatory boasting about amorous adventures that barely
hides the men’s deep fear of female sexuality. Rühmann announces that he
can’t go home to his landlady because, to quote this amateur lothario, “I
don’t want to be seduced” or, rather, “I can’t be stopped” when under the
influence (of eggnog, that is). Of course, these bold claims are invalidated as
soon as he confronts the object of such sexual bragging. Back in his furnished
room, Rühmann desperately tries to play the “man of the world” by
bouncing up and down (to look taller) and by speaking assertively (to hide
his nervousness). Yet as soon as his buxom landlady pushes him onto the
sofa and puts her arm around him (“I want to spoil you!”), he acts like a
scared little boy and signals his two friends to come to his aid. Their participation
in the subsequent exchange of words allows him to lose his inhibitions,
if only for a brief moment. He announces that he is moving out, to
which the landlady responds with a barrage of insults and accusations. Annoyed,
he throws hot tea in her face. Finally the three men take off like
104 Popular Cinema of the Third Reich