The Old Woman's Face, The Soup Tureen, Vreni Keller Speaks and Madame's Fanny

"I did the takes for this film in the fall of 1966 and in the summer of 1967. I came to know and love the 'old woman' who gave her 'face' in one of the city-run dining halls in Zurich to the first part of the film. I was looking for poets for the film 'Robert Walser' and was hoping to find one in one of the places Robert Walser used to go to decades before, but it proved to be a complete failure. The woman who gave her 'face' attracted my attention because she bad something radiant about her and, despite her advanced age, still had a roguish way of looking at the world. She must have seen me several times before during test takes, because she told me later that she had seen me getting thrown out ('Filming not permitted') and that this had happened at another city-run dining hall. Because the woman appealed to me so much, I asked her on the spur of the moment if she would be willing to let herself be filmed, even though I did not actually know what I wanted to film." (HHK)