Vojtech Jasny befriended Nobel Prize-winning author Heinrich Böll while taping one of Böll's stories for German television, and the writer asked him to adapt his 1963 novel The Clown for the screen. Like the book, the film is a scathing satire on the Catholic Church. Hans Schnier (Helmut Griem) is a professional clown, but behind his painted smile is a confirmed existentialist and rabid anti-Catholic. The story follows one afternoon in the life of this aggressive loner as he returns to Bonn, the city of his childhood, and unearths the painful experiences that brought him to bitter adulthood. His mother, once a fanatic Nazi, is now a fanatic Catholic, while his first and last love, Marie (Hanna Schygulla) married a Catholic after Hans refused to be married in a church. This West German production marks Jasny's first collaboration with the acclaimed British cameraman Walter Lassally (A Taste of Honey, Tom Jones, etc.).