Heaven on Earth

Local representative Traugott Bellmann is a vocal critic of society’s moral decline in general and the notorious nightclub “Heaven on Earth” in particular. Just his luck that he inherits the place – along with half a million marks – and furthermore, on the day, of all days, that he is appointed president of the Moral Decency League! And just his luck that the terms of the inheritance from his deceased brother stipulate that Bellmann has to spend every night from ten to three in the morning in his newly-acquired “den of iniquity”. Adding to the just his luck scenario is the fact that it all happens on Bellmann’s wedding day, with the daughter of a respectable champagne bottler waiting for her bridegroom in the bedroom … Shimmy, jazz, and Ziegfeld-style girl revues. With risqué innuendo and effervescent humour, the film turns elements of urbane entertainment into an attack on the 1926 obscenity law. At the same time, it celebrates cinema as a circus medium by elevating small artistes to large presences. Doors slam in the style of Ernst Lubitsch, while star Reinhold Schünzel, who would later direct Viktor and Viktoria, gives us a chic female impersonator as a jazz age gender bend.

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