"Die Ente klingelt um halb acht", which means basically that the duck is ready at half past seven, is a co-production in color between West Germany and Italy (minor parts are played by Italian actors) that resulted in a German-language movie from 1968, so two more years and this 85-minute film will have its 50th anniversary. The star here is of course Heinz Rühmann, who is closer to 70 already than to 60 and yet it is not one of his latest career efforts. He lived into his 90s. The female lead role is played by Hertha Feiler, Rühmann's wife and for her it is actually her final career performance as she died in 1970 at a relatively early age. Another actor here that I know is Rudolf Schündler. I quite like him, so I was fairly disappointed with how little screen time he had. Eventually, it is really all about Rühmann. And while I like Rühmann too, I must say that this film is a prime example of how a good script is still more important than strong and talented actors. This one here has no good script. You cannot blame director Rolf Thiele, who worked with Rühmann on several occasions at that time, for it, but you have to blame the writers. It's especially shocking this turned out so forgettable as there were so many writers working on the script here.
As for the story, it is almost entirely comedy, nothing too dramatic here or critical about society as we have seen it in some of Rühmann's later films. The title is already a good indicator of how it is really pretty light all the time. But I found it really underwhelming. The weakest moment was probably when they just included some old Rühmann recordings from other films I think and fit them into the context of when the main character (Dr. Alexander) here was younger and what he did several decades ago. These scenes felt almost like the makers were betraying the audience by giving them the film equivalent of recycled food. So yeah, it's one of the weaker Rühmann films I have seen for sure and I'd only recommend it to those who really love the actor and want to complete his body of work as far as they can. Everybody else can skip it and this film is a fairly decent prime example of how forgettable and weak the 1960s were in terms of German cinema, especially those films that did not deal with the years of Nazi Germany. Thumbs-down from me. Watch something else instead.
As for the story, it is almost entirely comedy, nothing too dramatic here or critical about society as we have seen it in some of Rühmann's later films. The title is already a good indicator of how it is really pretty light all the time. But I found it really underwhelming. The weakest moment was probably when they just included some old Rühmann recordings from other films I think and fit them into the context of when the main character (Dr. Alexander) here was younger and what he did several decades ago. These scenes felt almost like the makers were betraying the audience by giving them the film equivalent of recycled food. So yeah, it's one of the weaker Rühmann films I have seen for sure and I'd only recommend it to those who really love the actor and want to complete his body of work as far as they can. Everybody else can skip it and this film is a fairly decent prime example of how forgettable and weak the 1960s were in terms of German cinema, especially those films that did not deal with the years of Nazi Germany. Thumbs-down from me. Watch something else instead.