Talentprobe

“That's terrible!” reads one banner, a simple ‘Barf!’ another, and ‘Get lost, you cultural ignoramus’ a third. The 4,000 paying spectators at the ‘Talent Show’ at Cologne's Tanzbrunnen in the height of summer in 1979 know no mercy. Anyone who performs on stage in front of them, usually with German Schlager songs of the worst kind, always with the burning desire to be discovered for the professional music market, must expect to experience a catastrophe. The audience wants a slaughter, whistling and jeering like crazy, until even the last amateur “talent” should have realized that they would be better off singing in the bathtub. But someone like master painter Karl-Heinz Wandelbein, who has decided to perform the pieces “Her name was Carmen” and “Quando mi amore” this evening, is not going to be unsettled by the pack at the Tanzbrunnen. On the contrary: on the stage, the previously shy young man, who had seemed quite anxious and inhibited during the preparatory discussion with the compère Udo Werner, really blossoms, confidently imitating the show gestures of the Schlager professionals, and seems to feel comfortable in the midst of the general hubbub. The Cologne “talent show” is a test of fire. The petit-bourgeois gladiators who enter the arena often can't read music, recognize keys or hold a tune. Nevertheless, they dare to step into the spotlight. Behind the ritual at the Tanzbrunnen, the participants' longing to experience something different, something special, can be felt: at almost any price. Because what the audience does, heated up by the cynical comments of the master of ceremonies, is a targeted demolition. The documentarist Peter Goedel does not interfere, spares himself and the cinema audience critical commentaries. He and his four cameramen show the course of the “talent show” from the candidates' arrival in the afternoon until the decision is made late at night. At the very end, we see the faces of the losers: silent, withdrawn, exhausted, marked by an experience that they - and the audience in the cinema - will not be able to forget for a long time.