WALTER RIML

Cameraman - Actor - Photographer

In Walter Riml´s first film his director Arnold Fanck was fascinated of his ski- and comedian talents. Therefore Fanck engaged him for his next ski comedy "The White Flame”.

 An unequal duo of two carpenters from Hamburg discovers the first time in their lives snow and skiing. In that film with legendary ski stars Hannes Schneider and Rudi Matt as well as Leni Riefenstahl, the 2,05 m tall Walter Riml acts together with his 1,54 m short partner Guzzi Lantschner. 

 In the film they admire astonished the wooden "planks on the feet" of the natives.

Both are fascinated about these "planks" and they try to learn skiing with the aid of  two different ski schoolbooks.

 The grotesque slapstick and the acrobatic and foolish skiing of Walter Riml and Guzzi Lantschner enthuses the audience until today.

 Walter Riml and Guzzi Lantschner, that was the German answer to the Danish comedians Pat and Patachon. The characters of the "Hamburger carpenters" are a dramatic element which was successfully used in the films "The White Flame", "Adventure of the Engadin" and "Nordpol - Ahoi!".

 The last film with these two "Hamburger carpenters", "Nordpol - Ahoi!", directed by Andrew Marton during the Fanck-Greenland Expedition as a skit of the film "SOS Iceberg", becomes a sensational  success in 1934. Sadly this film is lost until today.

 After "Nordpol - Ahoi!" there was no more movie with these two "Hamburger carpenters”.

Later Walter Riml mentioned that this happened because of an assignment of Goebbels who said: "This is no German humour..."

 This is understandable, because the characters of these two "Hamburger carpenters" presumably go back to the Jewish Vaudeville artists of the Wolf Brothers.