Taxichauffeur Bänz is undoubtedly Schaggi Streuli's (1899-1980) best role. For once, he is not the independent ruler in profession and family as he is in "Polizischt Wäckerli" and as Postman Jucker in "Oberstadtgass", but a hard-working widower in a low position, a cab driver pressured by his younger colleagues, saving every penny of tips in order to enable his daughter, the only child, her studies of medicine. Even in the household, it is Oskar Bänz who cleans and cooks, except on Sundays where his daughter prepares the regular "meat soup". Streuli also wrote the scenario (as he also did in his other films where he played the mains roles, but never directed a movie).
Therefore, some rather amazing contents in these movies from the later Fifties, are to be ascribed to himself as well. For example, both in "Oberstadtgass" (directed by Kurt Früh) and in "Taxichauffeur Bänz" (directed by Hermann Haller and Werner Düggelin), there is a case of attempted suicide. In "Oberstadtgass", it is the girl which just before had asked Postman Jucker desperately for a letter she was expecting from her boyfriend. In "Bänz", it is the character of Maxi Schell in one of his first roles (with amazing Zürich German) who plans to throw himself before the train in Kreuzlingen, after he had lost the rest of his money gambling in Konstanz, which belonged to a customer of his. While in "Oberstadtgass", it is Jucker who invites the suicidal girl to his quiet place with the rabbits in order to distract her from her bad thoughts and by the way conducts the marriage between her and a friend of him, in "Bänz", it is Bänz who comes like a Deus Ex Machina driven along the street with his taxi when Toni Schellenberg (Schell) walks into the night after having given up his self-killing plan. Whenever there is recently the critique of Streuli as a one-role actor, one has therefore not only to consider his last movie, "Der Grotzepuur" (directed by Mark M. Rissi), but also "Taxichauffeur Bänz" in order to qualify this judgment. In the latter film, we see e.g. a consternated Streuli alias Bänz seeking with tears in his eyes and drunk for help from his long-lasting girlfriend (Marianne Hediger) after he has accidentally hurt a bicycling child with his cab on Rämistrasse in Zürich. This is far away from the rumbling and jangling and nagging and accusing tyrant Wäckerli for which role Streuli is criticized so heavily nowadays.
