Though not without unforced errors (in the lighter first half, co-writer/director Nikolaus Leytner doesn’t trust us enough not to turn obvious; at the end he trusts too much and can be cryptic), this period piece (late-‘30s Austria as the Nazi Anschluss stiffens from rumor to reality) balances charm & tragedy in echt Viennese style. Handsome country lad Simon Morzé, new to town (new to everything), comes to apprentice tobacconist/philosopher/WWI vet Johannes Krisch; gruff, quizzical, a bit of a bore/a bit of a cliché, but a good man to work for. And what luck for an over-imaginative adolescent struggling with love, death & hormonal urges that Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz), gruff, quizzical, a bit of a bore/a bit of a cliché, but a good man to talk to, is a regular customer you can tell your daydreams & nightmares to. Leytner using the store’s Havana cigars to get this unlikely friendship going in a natural manner; and in general laying on just the right amount of period detail to set the scene but not get in the way as Freud’s practice drops off due to rising anti-Semitism while the boy’s first love with a cabaret girl from Bohemia waxes, wanes & hits the political wall of popular fascism gone quotidian. Leytner showing particular facility in handling (and undercutting) the maturing boy’s ultra-realistic daydreams and dramatically-charged/color-constricted nightmares. The latter with something of the late-‘German’ romantic style of Swiss artist Arnold (‘Isle of the Dead’) Böcklin. In spite of some lapses, the film unexpectedly fine.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: Bruno Ganz and Alec Guinness may not have a lot in common as actors (Ganz as solid as Guinness is chameleon-slippery), yet they're the only men to have played both Freud and Adolf Hitler in lead roles. (Guinness plays Freud against modern psychiatrist Dudley Moore in LOVESICK/’83.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/12/hitler-last-ten-days-1973.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/downfall-2005.html
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