Cinema
The Butcher
Der Bockerer
Franz Antel · 1981
Synopsis
Vienna, March 1938. Karl Bockerer, a butcher in a working-class district, a man without politics, understands nothing of what follows the arrival of the Germans. His wife is enthusiastic about the propaganda, his son Hans joins the storm troopers; he refuses to salute the new cult and to disown his friends, the Jewish lawyer Rosenblatt and the socialist Hermann, and goes on saying what he thinks, so that the regime takes him for a harmless eccentric.
Context
The film adapts the play by Ulrich Becher and Peter Preses, published and premiered in Vienna in 1948, from a screenplay by Kurt Nachmann; Karl Merkatz, who already played the role at the Volkstheater in 1980, reprises it. Austrian critics were harsh, reproaching the film for softening the play, but it was a great success in East Germany and in the Soviet Union. Three sequels were made, in 1996, 2000 and 2003, up to the Prague Spring.
Who it is for
One hundred and four minutes in Viennese speech, where laughter and catastrophe advance together. It should be known that the film does not make its hero a resistance fighter.
Prizes and reception
Acting prize for Karl Merkatz at the Moscow festival in 1981 and at the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1982.
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