Event

THE EXCLUDED

Dir. Franz Novotny, 1982.
Austria, 93 min.
In German with English subtitles.

A forgotten gem of Austrian miserablist cinema, THE EXCLUDED is a prime example of agit-prop farce, the same strange brew stewed by Godard in LA CHINOIS and Fassbinder in THE THIRD GENERATION. This is the story of four bourgois would-be revolutionaries, attempting to smash the 1950s Austrian stateif they can overcome their own egos long enough to pull it off. The lead, Peter, is played with smarmy, wet-mouthed pretension by the great Paulus Manker, a regular collaborator with Michael Haneke. Weve all met someone like Peter before: that poetry-writing, Camus-spouting punk, peeking above a black turtleneck long enough to spew half-baked Maoist homilies about the kind of violent political action hes a teensy bit too scared to carry out himself. Surprisingly, Peter manages to form his own private fraktion of bored teenagers, and the cell happily engages in beatings, bombings, and shock tactics against slaves of social convention.

That is how post-war Austria looked to then-33-year-old director Franz Novotnyan urban underclass, politically at odds with the values of Austrias hypocritical Second Republic, unable to share its wealth, and eager to enforce violent punishment for its fascist past. His film, based on the 1980 novel by Nobel winner Elfriede Jelinek, is a cynical portrait of Austrias doomed, post-war youth, whose undirected political energy ultimately finds a conclusion with an explosion of meaningless violence.