Cinema: Teutonic Enlightenment

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French film makers frequently treat sex as a farce, and Swedes as a midnight-sun ritual. But for the Germans—ah, the Germans—it seems to be a subject to be explained.

Recently, the most successful commercial products of West German studios have been what the men in Munich call Aufklaerungsfilme (enlightenment movies). In essence, these are illustrated hygiene lectures about the varieties of sexual experience, padded out to feature length with one-dimensional plots. Unlike conventional grind-circuit skin shows, enlightenment movies approach sex with Teutonic seriousness, even though their accounts of reproduction and related matters are illustrated with explicit nude sequences. In Helga, the first Aufklaerungsfilm to be shown in the U.S., a robust young mother emerges from her shower just as her towheaded son enters the room to ask: "Where do babies come from?" Answers Mother, toweling herself: "Mutti's vagina opens and the baby slips out." The child looks satisfied, but whether from the answer or the revealing view of Mutti is hard to say.

Released in the U.S. in August, Helga has been doing remarkably good business. According to Variety, it has been rivaling The Boston Strangler and Paper Lion as a box-office draw in Baltimore, while compiling big grosses in other cities across the country. The reason for its success may well be the leering quality of the ads ("Parents: because of certain revealing scenes . . . we suggest you see Helga first!!!") rather than the sterling quality of the plot, a simplistic, sun-filled narrative of wedded bliss. The highlight of Helga is the birth of a baby, shot straight on in gaseous color. The scene, filmed at a university clinic, has all the craftsmanship of an Army training short, but it does have an undeniable effect on audiences. "The reaction everywhere is the same," confides a publicist for the film. "As soon as the head of the baby appears from a wave of blood, 90% of the spectators turn their heads away. And when the obstetrician cuts the umbilical cord, people faint regularly."

Helga's creator is an energetic German film distributor named Hanns Eckelcamp, who thought that "the development of human life" might make a jolly subject for a feature film. He slapped together Helga on a budget of $200,000 and watched in astonishment as the film grossed $3,500,000 in Germany alone. Inspired by Helga's triumph, other producers quickly jumped into the enlightenment-movie business. Among the titles that have been doing boffo business in Germany are Miracle of Love, The Perfect Marriage, and You, an account of masturbation and its tension-easing benefits narrated by Dr. Wolfgang Hochheimer of Berlin's Pedagogical Academy. Actress Ruth Gassmann, the unabashed mother of Helga, was quickly signed up to star in a pair of sequels: Helga and Michael, the story of a courtship from first kiss to consummation, and Helga and the Sexual Revolution, in which the heroine discovers the orgy.