Review of Hunting Scenes from Bavaria

"Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern" or "Hunting Scenes from Bavaria" is a West German film from 1969, so this one will have its 50th anniversary soon. It is still in black-and-white which was not too common anymore for the late 1960s and it runs for 1965. The writer and director is Peter Fleischmann and this is certainly among his most known works today, even if it is far from famous. The man who wrote the play that Fleischmann adapted was Martin Sperr and Sperr also plays the main character in here. He received a German Film Award nomination like basically everybody else from this film that played a character with an impact on the story. Six acting nominations has to be a record with the German Film Academy. Lets take a look at the story now. This is the tale of a man who returns to his village and tries to get integrated again, but doubts among the other villagers about the man's alleged(?) homosexuality make things truly complicated. For 1969, this was really a brave subject I must say and I applaud the makers for this approach. Sadly, I cannot say I enjoyed the watch beyond this progressive idea. The acting was not half as good as I expected looking at the awards attention and same can be said about the film itself. The last 15-20 minutes were pretty spectacular and I suppose the fact how they stayed in mind is the reason why many people rated this so highly on IMDb, but these last minutes were not good enough to sit through everything before. The first hour of the film drags quite a bit. And lets be honest about the ending here. I personally did not think his act of violence made sense in terms of how he was depicted before. Yes he was insecure about himself and sometimes reactions don't make sense, especially if they happen in the heat of the moment, but it just did not fact the character at all in my opinion. This was not a good film at all. It is uninteresting for the most part and finally offers realism for shock elements. I give it a thumbs-down.