In As of tomorrow, sometimes clumsy direction and often predictable script twists make us feel nostalgic not only for Mario Monicelli’s famous Big Deal on Madonna Street, but also for the comedies directed by Franz Antel himself in Austria in the 1940s and 1950s.
A film, Die gelbe Nachtigall, which represents a turning point in Franz Antel’s career. If, in fact, on the one hand, the director, with this film, for the first time directly confronted himself with a new medium, television, on the other hand, a sort of return to the past is evident. A sort of return to the glorious Wiener Films that were so important at the beginning and for most of his career.
It is not surprising that a feature film like 1. April 2000 (a fine fantapolitical satire directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner) was made precisely in 1952, seven years after the end of the world war and only three years before the Austrian State Treaty by which, among other things, the nation’s neutrality was officially proclaimed.
The Angel with the Trumpet, the successful feature film by Karl Hartl from 1948 and freely adapted from the novel The Vienna Melody, written by Ernst Lothar in 1946, is a family saga and faithful portrait of around sixty years of Austrian history, which successfully mixes the two different points of view – that of Hartl himself, as well as the point of view from the original novel.