A beginning of something

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Movie
Original title A beginning of something
Country of production Austria
original language German
Publishing year 1994
Rod
Director Nikolaus Leytner
script Nikolaus Leytner
production Thomas Konrad (production manager), Niki List (production manager)
camera Hans Selikovsky , Dieter Obenaus, Oliver Roth
cut Andrea Wagner , Elisabeth Klinka-Anselmi
occupation

The beginning of Something is an Austrian television film from 1994.

action

About 35-year-old Herbert Sobielski works as a caretaker in a Vienna apartment building and as a projectionist in a cinema. Once a week he visits his mother, who is in a wheelchair and lives in a nursing home. He lives very frugally in order to collect enough money for a trip to America: There he wants to look for his father, who when Herbert was ten years old left him and his mother and emigrated there with another woman. Herbert also plans to buy his own cinema in the USA and to settle there. The only one who is privy to these plans is an old friend of his father's, the kiosk owner Hans.

A new tenant moves into Herbert's apartment, the student Rita. Rita and Herbert are slowly getting closer.

His friends from the savings association persuade Herbert to put the money saved together in a life insurance policy. During the necessary medical examination, Herbert finds out that he has lung cancer and only has 12 to 18 months to live. Although he doesn't actually have enough money together, he now books a ship passage to America, and then gets so drunk that Rita has to help him into his apartment.

The next day, Rita invites Herbert to dinner in her apartment. The two spend the night together and subsequently seem to fall in love with each other more and more. Herbert tells Rita about the reasons for his planned trip to America: His father and his new wife wanted to take him with them at the time, were already waiting in Cherbourg for the crossing by ship when the mother obtained his return by court order against Herbert's will. He doesn't tell Rita about the cancer diagnosis. He quits both jobs, clears the caretaker's apartment and moves in with Rita. Rita wants to develop a closer relationship with Herbert, but worries about his reticence and because he refuses to take her to America. When she demands the truth more and more insistently, he tells her about the cancer.

When Herbert is urgently asked for a second appointment in the hospital, Rita first has to convince him to attend it. There he learns that the results and X-rays were accidentally mixed up and that he does not have any cancer. In the meantime, however, Herbert's life has changed a lot as a result of the diagnosis: He has made decisions that he would otherwise never have made. Now he doesn't dare to tell Rita that he's healthy after all. Both are enjoying the short time they have together and he doesn't want to risk losing them again. On the other hand, he doesn't think the much younger Rita can love him so much that a long-term relationship will work.

When Herbert's former boss Czerny got into financial difficulties and Herbert offered to take over the cinema, Herbert got one last chance to build a new life in Vienna. However, he refuses this and, to Rita's great disappointment, leaves for America as planned.

production

The film is a co-production by ORF and ZDF , made by Cult Filmproduktionsges.mbH It was shown for the first time on German television on February 21, 1995.

music

Two recurring pieces of music in the film are "New York 1963 - America 1968" by Eric Burdon & The Animals and the Andantino from Franz Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 20 . A first meeting between Herbert and Rita happens when a neighbor complains about Rita's loud music (Schubert). Therefore the musical design can be understood as an illustration of Herbert's inner conflict between longing for America and love for Rita.

reception

"Played credibly and with nuance"

- TV movie

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