Film Review

During World War II, every Austrian soldier called up for active duty was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler. Franz J€agerst€atter was an Austrian farmer executed by the Nazis for refusing to do just that. The film begins with footage of Hitler riding through the streets in an immense Nazi parade. Thousands of people are saluting Hitler and torches are blazing in the night sky. Franz and his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner) are farmers in a beautiful tiny Austrian hamlet. The couple and their village are not of the modern era. They live a simple life as people may have lived a thousand years ago. All their work is done by hand, such as winnowing and cutting wheat with a scythe. Their existence is agrarian, bucolic, and ancient. The couple share a simple bedroom decorated with religious icons and paintings. We see a church in the background of their pastoral surroundings. They are completely unaware of the world around them until one day Franziska looks up and notices airplanes in the sky. Something dark is approaching. Franziska asks Franz, “do you remember the day we first met? I remember that motorcycle. My best dress. You looked at me and I knew how simple life was then.” There is a foreboding sense that this simplicity might be in danger. Concerned about the state of the world, Franz speaks to the local Catholic priest: “What’s happened to our country? We are killing innocent people. Raiding other countries, the country is preying on the weak. If our leaders, if they are evil, what does one do?” The priest does not share Franz’s concern: “You have a duty to the fatherland,” he insists. Franz does not find the religious counsel he had hoped for. He cannot understand how his loyalty to his Christian morals would allow him to also be loyal to Hitler. However, the priest views Franz’s hesitation not as a sign of his good Christian faith, but as a traitorous act against his race and his country.