Wedding Night in the Rain (Hochzeitsnacht im Regen), 1967, dir. Horst Seemann. Movie nacht, Monday, October 17.

Wedding Night in the Rain is an East German musical from 1967, the year of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, perhaps the most intense fighting in the Vietnam War thus far, etc. Behind the Iron Curtain, though, there was at least the appearance of things going smoothly—I mean, there wasn’t all the hippie shit at the very least.

If you watch East German movies (on Kanopy), you’ll find these weird, hyper-sunny musicals, with, in my mind, great music, decent acting, some knockout color cinematography (oh, that Agfacolor) and solid direction. And, if you dig a bit, some good old propaganda—kind of like in America. Their films urge groupthink and acting selflessly for the collective, we prize individuality and money.

Case in point: Wedding Night in the Rain. This movie is bonkers in just the right way, buoyed by good music and winning performances from its two leads. Gabi (Traudl Kulikowsky) is a hairdresser in rural Germany who loves horses and is an accomplished rider. She’s going to follow her dream of becoming a jockey by moving to Berlin. Once there, however, she can’t land a job as a jockey (it’s only for men) and can’t find a place to live—you have to wait a year for a work permit and maybe two years for an apartment. Unless, of course, you find a man with an apartment to marry and then you’re set.

Gabi accidentally wanders onto the exterior set of some crazy gameshow where you answer straightforward questions with ridiculous answers (don’t ask) and win stuff. She uses this as a platform to advertise that she wants to marry a man with an apartment, and she wins a pram (don’t ask). A bunch of men descend in the hopes of wooing her, dancing along to a loony song about marriage that’s just great, and then comes in Freddy (Frank Schobel), a motorcycle mechanic, who tricks her into getting hitched. Turns out he’s also from the country, but his city “cottage” is a tent by a lake in Berlin.

Because of this, the two, despite initial fireworks, don’t get along. He hates horses, she hates motorcycles, and she’s understandably pissed that she’s living in a tent (he sleeps under a tarp held up by his motorcyle–at least he’s kind of a gentleman). The two eventually split after he is a big jerk to her, and so Freddy has to come to terms with her dreams and sacrifice to help Gabi become a jockey. Which he does. He does have to rely on others to do so (the collective!) and Gabi does indeed become a jockey and is great (because Communism recognizes women as equals).

Wedding Night in the Rain is great fun, has bizarre songs, dances, crazy camera angles, and its only drawback, to me, are the close ups. THERE ARE SO MANY FUCKING CLOSEUPS. It is insane the number of closeups in this movie, to the point where it’s fatiguing—you just want to reach into the film and push people a few feet back. I swear that half the movie is in closeup of everyone—and this is pretty extreme closeup, cutting off the top and bottom of every face. That close. For half the movie. Damn, Commies.

Frank Schobel was a popular singing star in East Germany and Traudl Kulikowsky was like actresses everywhere–ground up by the system and a partially by her own lunacy. Apparently, she wrote an infamous letter to the draft board (everyone was conscripted then), complaining that uniforms looked horrible on her (and women in general) and the boots were atrocious. Later, she spied for the Stasi, and collected huge dossiers on people she knew, though later she claimed that she did this because of an abusive marriage.