Maybe... Maybe Not

Maybe... Maybe Not (German: Der bewegte Mann) is a 1994 German comedy directed by Sönke Wortmann, in which a serially unfaithful heterosexual man, Axel Feldheim, is thrown out by his girlfriend Doro and moves in with the gay Norbert, whose feelings for him and a compromising scene with the pregnant Doro drive the plot's confusions.¹ The film was adapted from two comic books by Ralf König, Der bewegte Mann (1987) and Pretty Baby (1988), and became the most successful German film of the 1990s, selling more than 6.5 million tickets in Germany.^{2 • 3}

Production

The film was produced by Bernd Eichinger for Neue Constantin Film Produktion GmbH and Olga-Film GmbH in cooperation with Westdeutscher Rundfunk, with Wortmann writing the screenplay.⁵ Shooting ran from 6 April 1994 into May 1994 in Cologne, including locations in Ehrenfeld and the Gloria theater on Apostelnstraße.^{5 • 11} Gernot Roll was the director of photography and Torsten Breuer composed the music.^{6 • 12}

Wortmann, born in Marl in 1959 and trained at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film, had already scored hits with Allein unter Frauen (1991) and Kleine Haie (1992); Der bewegte Mann was his fourth feature.^{6 • 13} Joachim Król later recalled that Wortmann offered him the role of Norbert after asking whether he knew Ralf König's comics; Król knew König personally from the early 1980s Dortmund alternative scene.⁶

Reception and box office

The film premiered in German cinemas on 6 October 1994 and reached 3.17 million visitors after nine weeks; after 35 weeks it earned the Goldene Leinwand with a star, awarded for 6 million visitors.^{5 • 8} At the time of release it was the biggest-grossing homegrown film at the German box office and the third-highest-grossing film in Germany that year overall, after Forrest Gump and The Lion King.¹⁴ Stephen Brockmann, a scholar of German film, describes it as one of the most commercially successful movies of the 1990s, seen by well over six million viewers in Germany and competitive there even with American blockbusters such as Speed (1994), which drew a little over three million German viewers.⁷ One academic account does not credit it with the highest theatrical audience ever achieved by a German film up to that point, yet placed it first among domestic productions and in the annual top ten in both 1994 and 1995.^{13 • 18}

At the 1995 German Film Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis) the film won Filmband in Gold for Best Film, Best Direction, and acting achievements, and it also received a Bambi and the Gilde-Filmpreis.¹ In the United States the film, rated R, grossed $405.0K and holds a 50% Tomatometer score from 10 reviews with a 63% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.⁹ Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 of 4 stars, calling it "very funny in places, and unexpectedly affecting in other places".⁹

Place in German cinema

Der bewegte Mann is regarded as a defining work of the New German Comedy wave of the 1990s: one study states that, attracting more than 6.5 million viewers, it "epitomizes the New German Comedy trend like no other film".³ It was also a breakthrough for Til Schweiger, who became one of the most prominent German stars of the decade.¹⁵

The film's treatment of its gay source material has drawn scholarly comment. It was based on the best-selling comics of Ralf König, but critics note that the adaptation shifted the perspective toward heteronormativity: in the film the comic's gay viewpoint applies mainly to the gay characters, and a scene in which Norbert emerges naked from the wardrobe becomes a farce device rather than a meaningful coming-out.^{2 • 16} German reviews praised the situational comedy and Joachim Król's performance, described by Ralf König as a mixture of Woody Allen and Charlie Brown, while noting that the clichés of the gay scene and the gender images sometimes felt stale.^{11 • 17} The film was re-released in German cinemas on 4 June 2024.⁵

References

1. Der bewegte Mann, filmportal.de (English page), German Films Service & Marketing
2. German Cinema in the Age of Neoliberalism (chapter on Der bewegte Mann), UWP
3. Verena von Eicken, Masculinity in Crisis? What a Man (2011) and the German relationship comedy, Falmouth repository
4. Maybe... Maybe Not (1994) full cast and crew, IMDb
5. Der bewegte Mann, filmportal.de (German page)
6. Maybe... Maybe Not, Hof International Film Festival
7. Stephen Brockmann, A Critical History of German Film (2010)
8. Der bewegte Mann, Goldene Leinwand, HDF Kino e.V.
9. Maybe... Maybe Not, Rotten Tomatoes
10. Der bewegte Mann, FILMSTARTS.de
11. Der bewegte Mann, Köln im Film database
12. Der Bewegte Mann, Kinokalender Dresden
13. Chapter on Sönke Wortmann, University of Southampton eprints
14. Maybe... Maybe Not (1994), IMDb
15. Historical Dictionary of German Cinema (Reimer & Reimer), entry on Til Schweiger
16. Der bewegte Mann (1994), FILMREPORTER.de
17. Der bewegte Mann (1994), spielfilm.de
18. Die erfolgreichsten deutschen Filme aller Zeiten

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1990 to 1994 › Titles K to W

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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