DER UBERFALL (HOLD UP)
Austria, 2000, 85 minutes, Colour, M.
Roland Duringer, Josef Harder, Joachim Bissmeier.
Directed by Florian Flicker.
Hold Up is an exercise of a young director, a contrived situation, his showing his cinematic skills in dramatising a hold up and its collapse. Most of the film is a three‑hander, the young criminal wanting to hold up a shop to get money for his son's birthday, the tailor who is unwilling to collaborate, provokes the hold‑up man, and the third person, a client who has come to pay his bill and who suffers from angina and a range of other illnesses.
The film sets up its story with both dream and imagination as well as what happens in real life to Andreas. He takes the gun of his policeman brother‑in‑law, imagines he breaks into a supermarket but in fact breaks into the tailor's office. The tailor has very little money. Andreas spends most of the day with the two men, at times angry, at times conciliatory, sometimes bursting into violence. The tailor goes through a range of moods, finally bashing and kicking Andreas when he gets free. The client, who is afraid and very much the hypochondriac, finally is sympathetic towards Andreas. In a final irony, the client is shot by the police in mistake for Andreas. The tailor identifies him as the criminal. Andreas goes off with his family.
The film seems a cinematic exercise, but as it progresses, one is more interested in the characters and the dramatic psychological and emotional interactions.
1. The impact of the film? Characters, situations, the hold up, violence, the resolution?
2. The city settings, homes, supermarkets, the tailor's shop, the bank? The exteriors and the interiors? Light and darkness, shadow? The musical score? The songs?
3. The title and its literal focus on Andreas and the hold up in the shop? The audience sharing the claustrophobic experience?
4. Andreas, his age, character, appearance? The dream of the gun, his boots, going into the supermarket, the robbery? The reality of staying with his sister, taking his brother‑in‑law's gun? His wife and his love for his son, the promise to pick the son up? The birthday gift? The setting for the hold up?
5. The hold up itself: Andreas, the glasses and nose, the wig? His violence in the shop and not finding money? His anger and upturning everything? The interaction with the tailor, the tailor being provocative, Andreas's anger, tying him up, his mouth? The interactions during the day and the psychological twists? The interaction with the client, being sympathetic to his illness, not understanding it, the inhaler? The clock and the problem about his taking his medicine? The prostitute knocking on the door and the tailor's lies? The client telling the truth? The growing exasperation? The client wanting to go to the toilet, his being locked in, Andreas cutting his hand, the bleeding? The turning of the tables in the domination of the three men? Andreas untying the tailor and the tailor brutally bashing him? The sympathy of the client and his getting the gun, his getting the tailor to back off? His telling the truth about the bankcard?
6. Andreas and the tailor going to the bank, the reaction in the bank, the 5000 marks, the permission of the manager, the atmosphere of the hold up, Andreas running away, the tailor collapsing? His return to the client, their changing coats? Letting him go?
7. Andreas going off with his son and the happy ending? The toy fixed by the client? The client finding the wig, putting it on, being shot dead by the police and the tailor identifying him as the criminal?
8. The portrait of the tailor, his age, the story of his son, his work, stinginess? His wife, the prostitute coming in the middle of the day, his pornographic magazines? His reaction to the tailor (?), his outbursts of violence? Going to the bank and the irony of the ending?
9. The client, living with his mother, his work in the office, his illness, inhaler, tablets? Being sick, needing to go to the toilet? Beginning to assert himself, with the gun? Fixing the toy, the arrangement with Andreas ‑ and the ironic sadness of his death?
10. A contemporary urban story, violence, desperation, employment, unemployment, money, broken family?
