Movie Review: 'The Tobacconist'

The Tobacconist is yet another in a long line of dreary dramas about pre-World War 2 Europe. Ostensibly a coming of age story, The Tobacconist takes us to Austria circa 1938, just before the arrival of the Germans and the coming of age of a strange young man named Franz Huchel (Simon Morze). Franz has an affinity for being underwater. Repeatedly, Franz’s mother finds him hiding underwater holding his breath, be it in a lake or in a barrel holding a dead animal. Why? Who the hell knows.

On his 16th birthday, Franz is informed that due to the death of his step-father, he is being sent to Vienna. Franz has an uncle in Vienna who runs a tobacco shop. Franz will be his apprentice and will have a place to stay inside the shop while he develops a trade. Franz’s Uncle Otto (Johannes Krisch) is a character. A man of fearsome intelligence, Otto doesn’t merely sell tobacco, he claims to sell pleasure itself via tobacco and other means.

One of Otto’s regular customers at the shop happens to be famed neurologist and the inventor of psycho-analysis, Dr Sigmund Freud (Bruno Ganz). Each day the famed Doctor Freud drops by the shop to buy a newspaper and three cigars. One day, when the doctor accidentally leaves his cigars on the counter, Franz takes the opportunity to chase the doctor down and engage him in conversation about the mind.

Freud advises young Franz to keep a dream journal next to his bed. Write down everything the next morning and see if it makes any sense. He also advises him to seek love, an admonition that Franz sets about that very day. At a carnival, Franz is immediately smitten with Aneszka (Emma Drogunova), a Bohemian immigrant living with a dozen other women at a boarding house. She’s forward and exciting but still plays hard to get.

Thus Franz bounces from chasing after Aneszka to finding things about her that are less than ideal and reporting everything to Dr Freud who dispenses wisdom in a way that only an actor as cagey and incandescent as Bruno Ganz can. The role of Sigmund Freud was one of the last of Ganz’s career but even near the end of his life, he was able to martial that glint in his eye, that hard won humor and intelligence brought on by age and a lifetime of experience.

As Franz’s story is playing out between romance and psycho-analysis, the specter of Hitler and Germany looms. One of Franz’s regular customers, a well known local socialist, takes his life, jumping from a tall building in an act of defiance, just as the Germans are marching into Vienna. Franz witnesses the death first hand and fantasizes briefly that he’d heroically saved the man.

Dreams are a consistent theme throughout The Tobacconist with Franz’s vivid dreams portrayed in detail, most of them involving water and nudity. (Parse that how you will my dear Freudians.) The Germans never appear to enter Franz’s dreams, aside from a brief daydream of defiantly punching a Nazi officer, a daydream that ends in heartache for poor Franz after the officer leaves un-punched.

The problem with The Tobacconist is that the movie never really settles on a point. Franz is not a particularly compelling character. He’s interesting as a young man caught up in one of history’s greatest turmoils but we never arrive at any sort of life altering revelation. I don’t want to spoil anything but I did refer to The Tobacconist as dreary earlier in this review and I stand by that all the way to the end of the movie.

Bruno Ganz is quite good in The Tobacconist as he appears to relish the idea of playing Sigmund Freud. That, however, and unfortunately, is not enough for me to recommend the movie. I really admire Bruno Ganz but you would be better off renting Downfall, if you prefer your Bruno Ganz in World War 2 movies. Or you could seek out Wings of Desire, Ganz’ other legendary performance as an Angel who decides to become human.

The Tobacconist is simply too mundane and dreary to justify a rental recommendation.