Die Schweizermacher

Carrying on my series of

Unfair Assumptions Brought To Us By The World Of Swiss Cinema

welcome to Die Schweizermacher.

Die Schweizermacher ("Swiss-makers") is about these two men whose job it is to interview and investigate people who have applied for Swiss citizenship (and in case you don't know, the Swiss are not really very enthusiastic about handing out passports willy nilly). The two main characters are Bodmer, who has been doing his job for years and is all grizzled and diligent and humourless, and his new young sidekick, Fischer, who has yet to learn to be quite as thorough and anal as Bodmer. Together they investigate an Italian man with a Swiss wife and children (and a wacky fondness for William Tell), a german psychiatrist and his wife, and a dancer of eastern-European origin who has lived in Switzerland all her life.

Die Schweizermacher is allegedly a satire, but as we all know, the Swiss have no sense of humour*, and so I shall consider the film as a documentary. Bearing that in mind, I'm not sure that we really learn anything new and surprising about Switzies. They are all nosy busybody types (like the neighbour of the dancer, Malena, who is only too pleased to report at length on Malena's fondness for distinguishing herself by using a brown garbage bag when everyone else in the building uses black), they are obsessively punctual, they expect the worst of foreigners (Bodmer looks through Malena's handbag when she is out of the room and steals from it what he suspects are drugs that she bought from her Turkish colleague but in reality is some sort of foot powder), they have appalling double standards (Bodmer tells Malena that she really should be married because Swiss life is all about family and children, but the middle aged Bodmer is single and lives with his mother). Oh, and once again we learn that the Swiss are not to be trusted with their guns and that they will probably do something insane with them (like the lunatic neighbour of Malena who shoots pigeons from his apartment window).

I really enjoyed Die Schweizermacher. Apparently it's one of the few Swiss movies that non-Swiss people have ever heard of (although it was made in 1978, so if you haven't heard of it you don't need to worry too much. I think it's heyday was a long time ago), and obviously when you watch it you realise that it is not a documentary. That being said, though, I do wonder how much truth there is behind it all, and I am inclined to suspect that a lot of the movie is more of an exaggeration of the truth rather than total fiction. It sort of reminds me of The Castle, actually, but obviously all the characters in The Castle were far nicer people than all the characters in Die Schweizermacher**. As you would expect.

* I am not only making Unfair Assumptions based on movies.
** I don't necessarily agree with this point, actually. I just felt obliged as a patriotic Australian to say it.