Angst (1983)

I have kept up the Century of Cinema challenge (this film will indeed be number 45), though most of the films I’ve been watching for it are rewatches I previously covered on my old film blog that I didn’t think needed new reviews (I think I’ve only done 32 new ones, though I will get back onto some previously unseen stuff soon). Also, most of these have been films I liked before and still do (hi Mad Foxes, you magnificent piece of hyper-Eurotrash); Angst, on the other hand, I hated on first viewing in 2012. I have, mind you, learned a couple of things about it since then: one, the astounding cinematography is by Zbigniew Rybczynski, which I didn’t know before but certainly helps explain why it looks Like That (seriously, there are points after the killer enters the house where you’re not sure at first if you’re looking at a floor, a wall or a ceiling cos the angles are so mad); and two, there’s actually two versions of the thing, one with a prologue the director shot after the distributors in Austria said it was a bit short, and the other without it which I gather is his preferred version. I no longer remember which one I saw in 2012, but went for the shorter one tonight.

Angst was banned in lots of countries (probably including this one, though I can’t find evidence either way), being a serial killer film based on a real case and kind of purporting to show what it’s “really like” (especially the cleaning up afterwards). I still don’t think it’s actually as violent as a lot of other films even of that era, there’s only three killings and only one of those is really bloody (though it is really bloody, to be sure), and I still think it’s the, ah, other thing the killer does with that one which really pushes it over the edge. And I had completely forgotten the killer’s internal monologue throughout the film, though I don’t think it adds much anyway. My main problem with the film first time round was that I just thought it was utterly blank, and the killer is impossibly dull, and maybe that was the point—i.e. real murderers are much less interesting than fictional ones—but if so the film left bugger all to be interested in. Far too little happens to justify the length even of the shorter cut. So it looks like I do indeed still hate Angst, and a third viewing will not be required at any point.