Tales from the Vienna Woods is set in the early 1930s, but tells a story that could happen today, as well as tomorrow. Two stage actors introduce the audience to the stories of the protagonists at the Belvedere Gardens. Maximilian Schell’s camera immediately shows us a man from the back as the sun sets. An image that will recur frequently throughout the feature film along with numerous totals and pan shots necessary to maintain a certain detachment.
No one is really innocent or completely guilty in Hold-Up. Or, better still, each of the three characters is both victim and executioner at the same time. And this feature film by Florian Flicker stands out above all for its good screenplay, thanks to which moments of tension cleverly alternate with much more light-hearted scenes.
In The Seventh Continent, Michael Haneke’s first feature film, what we observe is the progressive and sudden disintegration of the contemporary bourgeois family, observed and approached in an almost Schnitzlerian style, complete with omnipresent violence that is never really represented before our eyes. A constant theme, this, in Haneke’s rich filmography.