A cigar is never just a cigar where Sigmund Freud is concerned. The father of psychoanalysis serves as a supporting character in “The Tobacconist” — and none other than the great Bruno Ganz embodie…
Ganz, whom many will recognize from his role as Adolf Hitler in “Downfall,” now plays one of the Führer’s many victims, a Jewish-born atheist forced to flee his comfortable Viennese home during the Anschluss of 1938, when Germany annexed Austria and occupied its capital, meeting with enthusiastic support from National Socialists and anti-Semites who agreed with his policies.
Following a family tragedy, Franz’s mother sends him to Vienna to work for an old lover, tolerance-minded tobacconist Otto Trsnjek . But in his dreams, Franz frequently returns to Lake Atter, where chintzy visual effects serve to represent this otherwise uncomplicated young man’s subconscious anxieties. By day, he’s prone to fantasies, too, in which he acts out, only to have the film abruptly rewind and find him frozen passively in place .
At a local street fair, Franz falls for Anezka , a gap-toothed Bohemian girl who speaks broken German but seems to know a thing or two more than he does about what men want from women. She kisses him on the cheek and disappears with her friends, leaving Franz despondent — while giving Freud a more interesting case to focus on than the spoiled housewives who pay him to complain on his couch.
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