The Butcher

Karl Bockerer is an ordinary man who runs a butcher's shop in Vienna. He has nothing to do with politics and does not fully grasp what is happening. In 1938 Austria is annexed to Germany and the war follows. Bockerer goes on running the same shop and talking in the same cheeky way. But in time that stance turns into a form of resistance. Franz Antel's Austrian film made Karl Merkatz an emblem in this part and sequels followed. The telling shows the Nazi years from behind a butcher's counter: the great events stay in the background and daily life is at the front. The film also figured in Austria's reckoning with its own past. There is humour in it, but the ending is heavy.