I Often Think of Piroschka

An ageing writer on a train journey goes back to his youth. In 1925 he had gone to Hungary as an exchange student and settled in a small village out on the plain. There he fell in love with Piroschka, the stationmaster's daughter. They spent a whole summer together. Then an invitation from another young woman took him to a nearby resort, and everything came apart. Kurt Hoffmann's German film is adapted from Hugo Hartung's novel. Liselotte Pulver became widely known through the part. The telling uses memory as a filter; Hungary here is not a real country but the name of the man's youth. The tone is light and wistful. The film became one of the best loved works of postwar German cinema.