A recession. Unemployment is rife, the economy is flat-lining and, people are partying until they drop. Between the rollercoasters and the merry-go-rounds, the helter-skelters, freak-shows, ice-cream stalls and gallons of ale, a zeppelin does its rounds, equally gawped at by aristos, stuffy clerks, manual labourers and petty criminals. Only Kasimir, a recently »let go« long-distance lorry driver, is reluctant to participate in the general merriment. His fiancée Karoline, who is still in work, tries to cheer him up but Kasimir is convinced that »every intelligent person is a pessimist«. The two part company and Karoline meets the tailor Schürzinger who predicts that, when a man loses his job, »love swiftly goes down the pan, it’s inevitable«. He is to be proved right. Kasimir falls off the straight and narrow with his mate Franz, steals cars and dallies with Franz’s girlfriend Erna. Karoline, in contrast, has higher ambitions and goes full tilt first at Schürzinger and then at his boss when he unexpectedly turns up, until the whole booze-up ends in disaster.
»And Love Never Ends« is the sub-heading Ödön von Horváth gave to his folk-play published in 1932 – but allows Kasimir to add: »Yeah, so long as you’re not unemployed.« In short scenes, Horváth depicts the isolation and creeping disintegration of all the social relationships of a man who suddenly finds himself surplus to requirements. He paints a picture of a world in all its remorseless brutality, malevolence and mundane banality where every emotion is determined by expediency and economics, a world in which people’s longings and dreams are shaped down to the last detail by consumerism. In such a world, what chance does love have? read less