32 | JULY 23 • 2020
N
ikolaus Leytner’
s The
Tobacconist is marked
by uneasy tensions.
When a chance tragedy upends
a Christian family’
s peaceful
rural life, they send their only
son Franz (Simon Morze) to
pre-Reich Vienna to apprentice
with family friend Otto Trsnjek,
a one-legged tobacconist and
Great War vet, as Nazism
encroaches on the city.
Johannes Krisch gives the title
character a sparky warmth that’
s
matched by his favored client, an
aging and largely domesticated
Sigmund Freud (the now-late
Bruno Ganz). Both elderly Jews,
they mentor Franz, linked by
their stubbornness and taste
for pleasure (“a very good cigar
tastes like the world,
” Trsnjek
says). Their indulgences create
a straightforward, easy bond in
which connection over culture
and taste seems to transcend
class distinctions.
The film has
plenty of erotic
material. Franz
is enamored
of a cabaret
dancer; Trsnjek
sells porn rags
in plain brown
bags; and Freud
is, well, Sigmund
Freud. Leytner
approaches all this with the
same lack of irony as his char-
acters’
cigar fixation. They are
subjects without palpable heat.
With a visual style defined by
loamy browns and sepias, every
shot here’
s nearly monochrome.
A handful of CGI dream
sequences are filmed in heavy,
overbearing blues that recall last
year’
s Judy. Desire, pleasure and
adolescent feeling are threatened
by the shadow of Nazism, as in
Cabaret. But Laytner feels more
at home with the opinionated
codgers than he does his young
lead, leaving Franz’
s inner life,
like Freud’
s ideas, more signified
than felt.
Charting Nazism’
s growth
within Vienna, the span in
which a trickle of hateful ide-
ology swells into a flood, is
what The Tobacconist shows best.
Bursting from fringe pamphlets
into mainstream editorials and
comedy shows, hate speech and
harassment switfly become the
regional climate. This will prove
familiar to anyone contending
with our present international
waves of fascistic governance
and hate.
As a Christian,
Franz is personal-
ly insulated from
the approaching
Holocaust. The
Tobacconist might
be a bolder film
if it showed him
becoming more
seduced. Still, by
the end, privilege renders him
complicit. Franz never says “Heil
Hitler” to anyone, but eventually
makes a half-surrender, replying
to a neighbor: “Same to you.
”
MENEMSHA FILMS
details
You can rent The
Tobacconist for $12 at
michtheater.org/screen-
ings/the-tobacconist.
After your purchase, you
have five days to watch.
Arts&Life
fi
lm review
The Tobacconist
Film charts the rise of
Nazism in 1930s Vienna.
GEORGE ELKIND CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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