Recommendations of the Editorial team
Annette Hess has continued the “Ku’damm” saga about the Schöllack family and their dance school into the disco era. Make some strawberry punch and put on your dancing shoes!
When the “Ku’damm 56” series began in 2016, some reviewers suspected the restoration of the Adenauer era. Completely rightly so, because the author Annette Hess presented the history of the Schöllack family and the “Galant” dance school on Kurfürstendamm as a not entirely exemplary but paradigmatic post-war panorama in which repression and expulsion, hits and rock’n’roll, music and women’s gold came together in the most beautiful way.
Claudia Michelsen plays the conservative, but when necessary surprisingly uncomplicated, patriarch Caterina Schöllack, the daughters are played by Sonja Gerhardt, Maria Ehrich and Emilia Schüle. The men are portrayed by Heino Ferch (with schmalzlocke) and Uwe Ochsenknecht, Sabin Tambrea, August Wittgenstein and Trystan Pütter. Plus Katharina Schüttler. There is no better ensemble on German television.
It was a comfortable feeling to see the “Forellenhof” and “The Incorrigibles” with better technical possibilities in a kind of reenactment. At the same time, “Ku’damm” also has the sentiment and relentlessness of Edgar Reitz’s “Heimat”. We accompanied the Schöllacks through the years 1959 and 1963, the economic miracle, ties to the West, the Berlin Wall, and Kennedy’s visit. The men change, the women stay.
The saga continues
Now Annette Hess has continued the saga. There are 14 years between the Schöllacks’ last appearances and “Ku’damm 77”. Caterina flirts with being an old woman and the daughters run a three-girl house. Marie Louise Albertine Becker and Carlotta Bähre as the granddaughters Friederike and Dorli complement the staff extremely well. There’s dancing again: Grandmother can also do disco, and she finds John Travolta attractive.
There is a risk of losing the dance school and the apartment above it because a Jewish foundation wants to return the property to the owners. The Schöllacks had paid one Reichsmark. “The prices were different back then,” says Caterina.
This Caterina, as shown in an excursion to the Low German countryside for a funeral, was a funny and wild girl until she was beaten by her foster father after escaping to the fair. Annette Hess already used a number of tricks in her version of “We Children from Bahnhof Zoo”.
Caterina doesn’t age, her hair just becomes more silvery. And Sabin Tambrea returns as his brother’s revenant. He is now the teacher Robert Beck. Tambrea says he wanted to play again. He does this just as well as August Wittgenstein, who is denounced by his gay friend in East Berlin. And Emilia Schüle comes back from prison and saves the family.
Melodrama instead of telenovela
Some call it a telenovela. I call it melodrama. Annette Hess is the Douglas Sirk of the series age: with her the lame woman can dance again and throw away the wheelchair, because there is wonderful power. Last but not least, “Ku’damm 77” is a marvel of equipment. The young Maurice Hübner staged chamber plays and dance scenes wonderfully. And the actors’ fantastic performances are crowned by Uwe Preuss as a Berlin police officer.
Things must continue at the Ku’damm!