1948 is an extremely important year in Austrian history, for too many reasons to list here. But let’s mention one: it was the last year after the end of WWII when it was not possible to export Austrian films to the Allied-occupied German territory. So, from 1945 to 1948, Austrian films were essentially made for local viewers only. Die Sonnhofbäuerin, a small, marginal production that is astonishing both formally and in terms of content, could probably only have been made in this period.
The story of a farmer’s wife waiting for her husband’s return from the war dazzles in the first half with its bizarre, sometimes brazenly impressionistic atmosphere, including unexpected slips into the realm of light Gothic. In the second half, though, with the husband’s return, the aesthetics become more sober and realistic, befitting a tone best called worldly wise. Karl Kurzmayer and Wilfried Fraß would continue to work together, but never again share directorial duties. The former would make only one more fiction feature, a broad Heimat comedy called Die Schatztruhe (1948), as topical with its story of greed as Die Sonnhofbäuerin is with its tale of a soldier’s homecoming (a major subject for Austria in 1948), which becomes a meditation on trust and marital fidelity under pressure. The latter and seemingly more ambitious of the two would very occasionally direct a few more works that, for all their qualities, don’t add up to something one could call an œuvre. Neither of them ever made anything with such a primitive energy and genius again.

Olaf Möller