Marianne Gerzner

Franz Schubert toils by day as his father’s clerk while secretly composing in Beethoven’s shadow, gaining little recognition until friends persuade publisher Diabelli to host a public performance where he meets and falls for soprano Therese Grob. Abandoning a teaching career, he moves in with artist and poet friends, finds inspiration for the “Erlkönig,” and together with Therese sustains himself by performing his songs.

In the year 1970 several Austrian newspapers reported of Viennese people beating a homeless person to death because they thought he had stolen 50 Schilling. This story was the foundation for the play JESUS VON OTTAKRING which Pellert brought to the big screen in his directorial debut. A parable about intolerance in society.

"Who Drove the Grey Ford?" ("Wer fuhr den grauen Ford?") is a 1950 West German crime film directed by Otto Wernicke, marking his only directorial effort, and starring Wernicke as Kriminalkommissar Thieme alongside Ursula Herking, Hilde Sessak, and Wolfgang Neuss. The movie was filmed at numerous original locations in post-war Mannheim. It draws directly from a real-life 1949 post office robbery in Mannheim, exploring the social dislocations of the era through a documentary-style depiction of petty crime and moral dilemmas among young survivors of World War II. The plot centers on three young men scraping by through car stunts and minor cons in the uncertain landscape of Nachkriegsdeutschland, where one sensitive outsider, Peter "Penny," seeks to leave the life behind for love but is coerced into participating in a high-stakes robbery of a money transport. The heist unfolds according to plan, but Penny's well-intentioned yet careless action alerts the police...

Else is the pretty daughter of a Viennese lawyer. The young lady has been invited by her aunt to spend a few days on a summer holiday in San Martino. There she receives an express letter from her mother requesting her to ask the wealthy art dealer Dorsday for a much-needed loan. Her father is facing bankruptcy due to embezzlement. Else approaches Dorsday and describes the difficult family situation. Dorsday is willing to lend the necessary money, but stipulates that Else must expose herself to him naked for a quarter of an hour. Else reacts indignantly to this request, but over the course of the evening realizes the dilemma she faces. Caught between unconditional loyalty to her father and a strong longing for autonomy and self-determined femininity, she cannot commit to either alternative.

Karl Bockerer is a Viennese original. He survives the ‘great times’ – to his own dismay his birthday is on the same day as the one of the “Führer” – by pretending to be more stupid than he really is, and uncovers, over and over again, the hypocrisy and the uptightness of the epic nonsense in his milieu by means of real and phony naivety. Where Schweijk made a mockery of the ruling system by being a presumptive follower, the Viennese butcher strives against the tide. And he is not alone, has family and friends. His personal braveness protects him neither from the rebellion in his own house, nor from the horrors of total war…