Hansjürgen (Jason) Pohland is a German film director and producer born in 1934. Together with Haro Senft (born in 1928) he was one of the 26 people who signed the Oberhausen manifesto in 1962, which announced the death of the old German film industry and demanded the freedom of creation.  Pohland already had some experience of short film the year before when filming this advert.  He had, for example, made the highly noteworthy Schatten in 1960.

In 1961 Pohland chose a jazz singer none other than Tobias (Tobby) Fichelscher, the composer of the music for this advert as his first feature film subject.  Singled out by critics, the film Tobby followed the young singer, who had to make a professional decision, for 24 hours.  The work gave a lot of scope to improvisation and set a new tone for German film which was at the height of an economic, institutional and artistic crisis.

While sound spiced up this advert, the image showed off Berlin architecture.  Several cultural landmarks can be recognised in West Berlin. The first scene shows the memorial church dedicated to Emperor William 1st (1797-1888) in the background. Bombarded during the war, its bell tower is nicknamed “the hollow tooth”.  The setting cleverly leaves the new church designed by Egon Eiermann (1904-1970) which was under construction in 1961 off camera! The art academy, that you can spot next, was divided up into two branches during the cold war.  Here is its west pendant, built in 1954. Then the Schiller Theatre appears which had been opened a few years earlier in 1951. Finally this staircase shot from a low angle leads to the congress centre, designed by American architect Hugh Stubbins (1912-2006) – one of the symbols of the West since it was America’s contribution to the international architecture exhibition in Berlin in 1957. Nothing like these landmarks that are the latest thing in fashion to convey a brand image!