Der Zithervirtuose is a remake and continuation of a silent scene in the film Musikal – Clown, with an extension of the ending which itself seems endless, and it is the fruit of one of Valentin’s craziest ideas. Everything is based on the nightmare of going off the refrain, on the difficulties of this virtuosic cittern player, who goes so far as to deny his own instrument; the final catastrophe of a monomaniacal prisoner, unable to free himself from the sequence of the notes, is heralded. The sonata of the virtuoso is lost, becoming an infinite and continuous obsession. The film is also convincing proof of how much Valentin reworked the scene: despite the new possibilities of sound film, the conclusion of the act (which continued on in the old version) is not defined by a gag with dialogue, but by a non-verbal, purely acoustic ending with no end.


Michael Schutte e Peter Syr (eds), Karl Valentins Filme, München/Zürich, R.Piper, 1978