Der SAS-Film

SAS CINEMATIC

50 years ago a bunch of SASlers shoot two shortfilms under director Beat Walpoth. The awarded films shows a lot of improvisation and a lot of action. And at the end a naked woman emerging from a ski bag…

Beat Walpoth | SAS Zürich

In the post 1968’s we were a group of young and daring SASlers still studying at various universities in Switzerland and full of crazy ideas. This was also the time when magnificent ski films were made such as the ones from Willy Bogner and others. At that time most films dealt with social-political issues and were problematic and depressing. Therefore, we had something funny in mind. In the SAS we were a group of young, adventurous skiers, especially in Zurich where I studied medicine, who were ready for all kinds of film adventures and that is how it all started. The father of one of my friends was Dr. Richter, a Munich ‘Fasching Prinz’, the founder and owner of Arriflex cameras which were the world’s best at the time. So, I went to Munich with my old Volkswagen to tell him about our plans and ask his advice. He lent us the most recent professional film material for making this movie and asked us only to insure it, which we could barely pay! Nobody in our team had any film experience therefore the first

16mm film came out completely black because we inserted it wrongly in the camera: but we learnt quickly on the job!

No Script but many crazy ideas

There was no film story, no script, nothing. Only a lot of crazy ideas to film to immortalize us and the SAS! But since we were all good skiers, most actions were in the snow and "une course poursuite" of a ski bag was a good start. This ended up with several good rushes without a beginning or an end.

The Arriflex 16 could load reels of 30m of Kodak or Ektachrome, representing 3’ of action. Since we had no budget at all we could only film each scene once and very rarely had the luxury to repeat it from another angle. This happened normally after a brief discussion with the actors, without any rehearsal, since most of the actions were dangerous or prohibited due to the fact that we had never asked for any permission to shoot in public space, including on the Quaibrücke and at the Zurich airport.

Police interventions and lawsuit

Police interventions happened quite often but luckily the Swiss police still had some sense of humor. However, the situation was different on the Quaibrücke when we filmed a scene of chasing the ski bag loaded on an old MG, followed by an old fire engine on the pavement of the Quaibrücke and where in order to escape the followers, Marc Faber jumped in mid-March into the cold lake of Zurich, followed by ‘Inspector Smith’ Ernst Pfenninger. The police, fire brigade and lake police with two boats were on-site very rapidly because some passers-by alerted them that people were jumping from the Quaibrücke. Luckily the filming was already done…

The situation at the Zurich airport, Kloten, could have been more problematic and certainly nowadays would have had us all under arrest, if not shot! At that time, I was a private pilot of small aircrafts and was given permission to drive out on the tarmac where a plane was waiting to take off with the ski bag. However, to get to this small plane, we had to cross a taxiway and in this thriller, we had the old fire engine which was following the MG with the ski bag. On top of this some of my actors had the good idea to take their military guns with them to look more real. As we had to stop before this taxiway for an incoming passenger plane, my actors showed their guns and waved at the plane. The pilot made a full stop and radioed to the tower: Emergency brake due to armed men and fire engine on the tarmac! All that ended at the Federal civilian transport agency in Bern.

Acting improvisation

I was so lucky to have many members of the SAS participating freely and willingly in Galipette to be untrained, uninsured, stunt men "like Jean-Paul Belmondo". All showed great talent for improvisation especially since often no rehearsal could take place beforehand. The actors included (alphabetically): Thomas Coppetti, Marc Faber, Ueli Forster, Robert Kappeli, Michèle Marias, Ernst Pfenninger, Marc Terraillon, Beat von Albertini, Beat Walpoth and many SASlers playing in different scenes.

Over a period of one year of occasional film shooting, we assembled various sequences, equaling the best James Bond stories, chasing after a ski bag. However, we needed an ending: What better ending than a naked girl emerging from the ski bag! Luckily "Me too" did not exist at that time!

Hunt for the "fil rouge"

Here the problems start, "C’est là que les Athéniens s’atteignirent". Without a script, only a vague pursuit story, we had the difficult endeavor to put a series of mute film sequences together in order to re-build a story having a "fil rouge". This was a long tedious work with a professional film editor J.L. Misar, from Schwarz Film Technik in Bern. Once we had an acceptable flow of images, we needed to complete it with sounds and words. The ingenious idea was to make a post-production as a live recording in the studio, after having shown the film to the actors before a meal which was bien arosé. Thereafter the sound recording took place and all the actors were free to improvise and speak freely on the film which was shown only once to them. Additionally, we had a professional sound maker, Ezio Bedin who created all the necessary sounds only with his mouth.

Award at Montreal Film Festival

Since we had a lot of very nice skiing episodes with SASlers we decided to make another short documentary on the SAS activities, including ski racing, jumping, powder skiing, water skiing and others from that time, showing Claude Brichet and several members of our club. Again, in order to make it more lively, we found a semiprofessional jazz player, Jürg Lenggenhager and his trio to improvise and play directly on the projected images, as in the old time of Charlie Chaplin’s films. As a narrator my stepfather, Jean Carle, was kind enough to also add some pertinent comments where they were needed.

The premiere of the two Galipette films was held on December 12, 1972 in the cinema Wellenberg in Zürich with the attendance of many young and AH SASlers.

At the end, the actors came on stage with the ski bag and, as should be, a naked girl emerged. She was then carried by Marc Faber on to the lap of Willy Burgin!

The Galipette 1 film was shown at the Solothurner Film Festival in 1972 and received the special prize from the jury of the International Montreal Film Festival in 1973.

To put it in perspective, 50 years after making of "Galipette", we are happy to have been able to produce this ski comedy as well as a SAS ski documentary with the help of very motivated and engaged young members of the SAS. These two films represent certainly an historic moment of the academic ski sport and what was in the mind of young students at that time. Also of great interest is the very dynamic filming and directing performed by myself since most of the scenes were not "film school" but improvised. Finally, the freedom to perform many of the dangerous and public shootings could definitely not be done under today’s circumstances. Since then, all the actors and myself regained a normal, academic SASler life and the film ended in the Swiss film archives at the national Cinématèque.

What a luck to have been able to live such a dream!

Live!

For it’s 50 jubilee the SAS short movie "Galipette" directed by Beat Walpoth will be shown at the SAS Fête Centrale in Geneva in Summer 2022!