Notes from the Underworld

Seated at tables in taverns and sparsely furnished rooms, captured in black-and-white images, Viennese folk singer Kurt Girk and his friend Alois Schmutzer, the “King of Vienna’s Underworld”, smoke and discuss their eventful lives. They share memories of their childhood during the war and of the wild years that followed, back when they were notorious. With just a few but incisive questions, Covi and Frimmel get the two friends, some of their fellow travellers and even opponents to open up. As if to prove they are not spinning us some cock-and-bull story, their intense anecdotes are endorsed by footage from broadcaster ORF’s archive and their own private photo albums, providing a portrait of a bygone era in which men like “Loisl” and “Kurtl” wrote urban history – the unofficial version, replete with shoot-outs, gambling debts, unbelievable conditions in prison and in the courtroom. An oral history that neither romanticises nor passes judgement, but which commands respect for the fearlessness of the two protagonists. The film’s depiction of Vienna in the 1960s fills a gap in terms of content, while formally, it shows us what contemporary cinema can do. (Berlinale)