Supermarket

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Willi (Klick-discovery Charlie Wierczejewski) lives on the streets of Hamburg, always on the run. Being sheltered by a good-natured journalist who attempts to resocialize him doesn’t stop him from getting in trouble. While being involved with small-time crook Theo (Walter Kohut, A BRIDGE TOO FAR a.o.) who makes him work the streets, he falls in love with prostitute Monika (Eva Mattes, STROSZEK, ENEMY AT THE GATES, IN A YEAR WITH 13 MOONS a.o.). Willi comes up with a dangerous plan that will enable both of them to make their last great escape.

Not making its protagonist a welfare case but romanticizing it as a James-Dean-like outlaw was unheard of in German cinema of the time; SUPERMARKET was the first film to depict social reality in such an immersive way. As much as it is a carefully orchestrated action film, SUPERMARKET encompasses the hopes of a generation of young people who thought of themselves as both misunderstood and rejected and is rightfully a landmark of 70s cinema.
The style of Director of Photography Jost Vacano, whose legendary tracking shots became part of cinematic lore, can be traced back all the way to SUPERMARKET: faced with the difficulty of having to run after its protagonist and to produce the now-legendary heist scene, Vacano levelled the camera gyroscopically, a technique he would later use in DAS BOOT. Hence, the camera becomes one with the spectator's eye: with an intense knowledge of the milieu it depicts, the audience follows protagonist Willi, acting in a story not to far from his own, through the shady bars and back yards of Hamburg of the 70s. The camera’s moveability matching that of the protagonist, SUPERMARKET creates a gripping experience of a restless, homeless life on the run.