Franz Schuh

It is summer and five overly-seasoned college students have been given the task of writing a group paper on Franz Kafka’s “The Country Doctor.” At first they are reluctant, but in a cloud of hashish they come up with the idea to film the story instead. Their film location is a campsite in Sicily, which they had already booked ages ago for summer vacation. The technical department consists of a couple “unique” men from the Vienna film scene. To everyone’s surprise, they even manage to get Kafka himself to play a supporting role in the film.

Although he spent a relatively short period of his life in Austria, Canadian-born John Cook (1935–2001) remained, in his own words, "Viennese by choice.” Having worked as a commercial photographer in Paris, Cook’s […] first “regular” production was Schwitzkasten, based on a novel by the leftist writer Helmut Zenker. Today, the film is considered one of the few undisputed masterpieces of the New Austrian Cinema: a freewheeling, tender, and strangely humorous portrait of working-class (and out-of-work) lives.

Shortly before the end of the war: Disillusioned Austrian soldiers crammed into a barracks in a prison camp welcome a new arrival who has nothing better to do than rave to the men, who have been separated from their homeland for years, about his Viennese lover. When the womanizer mentions the name of his latest love affair, Manhardt, her husband, jumps at him in outrage; the adulterer falls and dies. Acquitted of murder and returned to Vienna, Manhardt cannot get over his Anni's infidelity. Friends and a second fateful coincidence help.

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