Komm nur, mein liebstes Vögelein (Rolf Thiele, West Germany, 1968)

Tanja Gruber

Barbara Capell

Come Along, My Darling Bird is a typical comic erotic pageant from director Rolf Thiele in which are depicted diverting scenes of nudity characteristic of different eras in German history.

This type of thing can seem insipid to modern audiences. Lots of simpering young lovelies displaying their scrubbed-pink bodies in erotic dalliances which downplay (if not entirely airbrush) the existence of pubic hair. Tanja Gruber as a courtly mediaeval lady who enjoys her baths in rose petals, and Barbara Capell as the young pet of a lady of Versailles are the best examples.

The group scenes are more interesting. We briefly see some naked witches being tortured, and take a look inside a public bathhouse from mediaeval times. According to the latest German scholarship men and women bathed naked in wooden tubs as indifferent to sex as if they were sitting at tables in any other public space. They had time for a meal, a good old natter, and even a singsong apparently.

But as the timeline moves on to the mid 20th Century there looms over Germany a darkening shadow of approaching disaster. Yes, hippies are about to arrive on the scene. Meanwhile we can enjoy a platoon of handsome young women marching naked in front of the Nazi medical inspection board, all in sepia-tinted footage.

So overall, quite nicely staged, and not bad if you like this sort of thing.

IMDb link