Austria,
1986, 121 min
Shown in 1987
CREDITS
- dir
-
Axel Corti
- scr
-
Georg Stefan Troller, Axel Corti
- cam
-
Gernot Roll
- cast
-
Gabriel Barylli, Nicolas Brieger, Claudia Messner
- source
-
ORF
-
COMMENTS
Axel Corti in person.
OTHER
Freddy is an Austrian Jew who escaped to America and made a new start in Corti’s previous film, Santa Fe. Now, in the final and most complex part of the Where To and Back? trilogy, he is in uniform, an American soldier back in Vienna in 1945 and ’46, in love with Claudia, a young actress who wants the role of Sabina in a new production of The Skin of Our Teeth and who knows “You can’t achieve anything by a war unless you survive it.” Corti’s command of scene and place is now enriched by the shifting morality of the post-war world and by the fascinating climate of compromise. And in the examination of the Thornton Wilder production, and of Freddy’s growing awareness of his own isolation, Corti has made a film that reaches the density and emotional force of Renoir’s La Regle du Jeu. Nothing is final or settled: we may hope to see the triolgy go on. But already, Corti has told us the story of his country and of a dozen unforgettable characters and raised the disturbing possibility that “You can live a very decent life now without believing in anything. Winner of Grand Prize at 1986 Chicago Film Festival.
—David Thomson
FACTOID #175
In 1967, two years prior to her death, the Festival honored Judy Garland in the first (according to the program note) American homage of her work. Garland was unable to attend.
