Director Philipp Stölzl staged Stefan Zweig's “Schachnovelle” for the cinema.
Oliver Masucci is impressed in the lead role.
Our film review:
There he lies on the floor, pressed into the corner between the parquet and the wall.
Physically unharmed, as far as can be said.
But his soul is devastated, the nerves are as thin as stripped copper wire and taut like the tendon on the bow of a marksman.
The solitary confinement of the Nazis deprived this Josef Bartok, once a successful lawyer in Vienna, of everything: his self-confidence, his certainties, his previous life.
“Schachnovelle” is Stefan Zweig's last work
Need has looked for a valve.
Bartok raged as much in his hotel room, which is his cell, as the tormentors inside him.
The bedding was padded, the mattress flung across the room.
But when he lies there, exhausted, the sun suddenly shines through the window - and the bed frame casts shadows: a pattern of small squares.
A chess board!
Now there is something like hope in Bartok's face, he finds his composure again, because chess promises distraction, support, yes: strengthening against the terror of solitary confinement.
It's one of the most haunting scenes in a film that often finds strong images.
And Oliver Masucci, who plays Bartok, succeeds at this moment in a deep, direct access to the character's great suffering.
Philipp Stölzl adapted the “Schachnovelle” by Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) for the cinema and interpreted the last, probably best-known work by the Austrian author very convincingly.
The focus is on the lawyer Josef Bartok, whom the Nazis arrested immediately after their invasion of Vienna in 1938 because they wanted to extract the access data for his clients' accounts from him.
At some point Bartok comes across a chess book unnoticed by his tormentors.
He had hoped for more substantial content, but his need is increasing every day - and soon he begins to replay the games: the main thing is that he has something with which he can structure the slow flow of time.
Bartok plays against himself - to the point of madness.
“Schachnovelle” looks deeper into the abyss than Stefan Zweig does
Stölzl and screenwriter Eldar Grigorian, whose precisely elaborated script is impressive, look deeper into the abyss than Zweig does in the text. And they become more concrete. While the writer discreetly (and thus distanced) from “Dr. B. “speaks, Stölzl gives his lawyer a full name and on top of that shows the happy, full life of this Josef Bartok. This is how he brings him closer to the audience. In addition, Stölzl takes space to accompany the final hours of the republic before Austria joins the Hitler Reich and finds: Carelessness, also arrogance, with which not only Bartok does not see, cannot see, does not want to see the disaster. This makes the crash all the more severe. The director skillfully weaves the Odysseus motif into his production (also in contrast to Zweig).Because nothing else is his main character: a seeker - for a way out, for a form of resistance. In the end he will find the most brutal form of rescue.
It is remarkable how cautiously Stölzl, who likes to work big (also has to work: otherwise his Bregenz “Rigoletto” would have flooded in Lake Constance), staged the seemingly small, quiet scenes.
“Schachnovelle” is a great ensemble film
“Schachnovelle” is a great ensemble film;
the director can afford to cast supporting roles with people like Birgit Minichmayr or Samuel Finzi.
The very often great Albrecht Schuch succeeds in showing not only the perfidy of the violent in the Gestapo man Böhm, but also the people.
However, the production is carried out by Oliver Masucci, who defolishes the inner waves of Josef Bartok with merciless meticulousness until in the end the soul of the victim lies defenseless before us.
Big cinema.
Read our interview with lead actor Oliver Masucci here.