A Translation of Der Italiener, a Screenplay by Thomas Bernhard

The Italian * A Film

THE LAND-SURVEYOR, fat, fifty, in a Hubertuscoat, stands completely motionless, as land-surveyors always do when looking through a scope,  while he gazes up at and observes the progress of the Wolfsegg-bound hearse, the hearse that with ever increasing speed is traveling through woodlands, open countryside, woodlands, open countryside, then woodlands again, then open countryside again, suddenly at a distance of two-hundred meters from the hearse the land-surveyor’s telescope focuses on the two UNDERTAKERS (driver, passenger), their profiles, the backs of their heads, cut to the stretch of road in front of the hearse, with the camera on the land-surveyor at a distance of two-hundred meters, then cut back to the point-of-view of the land-surveyor watching the hearse snake up the winding road, only ambient natural sound up to this point, as in general throughout this film, only ambient natural sound, derived from nature, unless some other kind is expressly specified, otherwise nothing.  The hearse reaches the village square, camera on the statueof the Virgin Mary opposite the war memorial, the hearse enters the square, turns on to the side leading to the castle, and parks in front of the bakery.  The passenger gets out and goes into the bakery.  Shot of the driver as he sleepily yawns and gazes at the patch of street visible through the windshield.  The driver emerges from the bakery with a large loaf of brown bread and gets into the hearse, the car door is slammed shut with conspicuous force and therefore with conspicuous loudness.  The hearse heads towards the Fairview Inn[1], just in front of the inn it turns on to the road leading to the castle, the camera is now stationed at the top of the gate of the castle grounds, the hearse approaches the camera, heading upwards at a steady clip, the hearse enters the castle grounds, proceeds to the front door of the castle.  The passenger gets out and rings the doorbell.[2]    The driver gets out.  The driver and the passenger are both wearing calf-length black coats, black visor caps with no insignias but with braided silver piping.  The passenger and the driver in turn glance up at the windows.  The driver pulls a soft cloth out of his valise and polishes his shoes.  Both men glance up at the windows.  Nothing.  The passenger rings a second time.  Now the passenger opens the rear door of the car, both flaps of the door, as wide as they can open.  A gunshot is fired at the rear of the house, as if by way of putting to flight a flock of birds perched there, the undertakers react.  The driver glances at his shoes while the passenger glances up at the windows.  Now the door of the castle opens.  In the gloom of the doorway nothing is visible.  The undertakers lift several enormous paper pillows out of the hearse, they make three trips with these pillows to the doorway and hand the pillows over and then make two trips with tall stacks of funereal linen and hand over the stacks without the viewer’s seeing who is relieving them of the funereal linen-stacks.   The two of them then station themselves in front of the doorway and remove their caps and remain motionlessly standing for a moment until the door is shut from within, then they get into the hearse  and drive first slowly, then increasingly faster past the conservatory through the gate of the grounds; from the center of the grounds and starting when the hearse is level with the conservatory the land-surveyor suddenly begins tracking the hearse with his telescope for four or five seconds, after four or five seconds it is clear that the land-surveyor can no longer see the hearse, although he continues tracking it through his telescope.  Shot, from the land-surveyor’s point of view, of the surface of the grounds and beyond them the full front of the castle.  The front door and all the windows are shut.  Reverse shot from the front of the castle looking down on to the surface of the grounds.  Now from above, from the entrance to the grounds, the completely empty area just in front of the Fairview Inn is shown out of focus.  Gradually the area in front of the inn comes more into focus.  There may be some sounds characteristic of this time of day (8 AM), but one pretty much hears nothing.  The camera remains fixed on the area in front of the inn for ten or fifteen seconds, but beginning at the eighth second one hears the sound of a stuck steam locomotive near Manning[3].  The sound intensifies, the wheels of the locomotive are spinning in place, et cetera.  The square in front of the inn recedes, slips back out of focus, becomes indistinct, the sound of the locomotive becomes indistinct, the locomotive’s whistle sounding from a much greater distance than its other noises previously did.  Now from the left of the area in front of the inn enter two ALTAR BOYS.  Altar Boy No. 1, fat, short, aged eleven, Altar Boy No. 2, thin, tall, aged twelve, in black, ankle-length church-gowns, bareheaded, as one can now see, they are hurrying uphill along the road leading to the castle, each of them is lugging a baroque wooden candlestick from the village church, the candlesticks are as tall as Altar Boy No. 2, and heavy.  Abreast, but keeping their distance from each other, they lug the candlesticks up the hill, their persistent attempts to carry on a conversation being preempted by the strain of hurrying along with the candlesticks.  Suddenly they realize that it is impossible for them to converse with each other, and they continue up the road in silence.  When they have covered exactly half the distance to their destination, there is another  gunshot, the altar boys take fright, look up while putting down the candlesticks.  Again: it is as if a flock of birds has been put to flight behind the castle.  The take registering the altar boys’ fright, hence the interval between the gunshot and the moment when the altar boys continue on their way with the candles, lasts eight to ten seconds.  Now the altar boys are walking very quickly, now one all of a sudden hears the sounds attending their upward progress with especial distinctness, soon nothing but these sounds can be heard, so that it becomes clear that the altar boys are on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.  Now one notices: Altar Boy No. 2’s hair is blond, Altar Boy No. 1’s, black.  Mouths wide open.  The sound of the stuck locomotive in the distance.  As the altar boys approach the castle, the camera is stationed at the gate of the castle grounds, filming them from behind, three blasts of the locomotive’s whistle.  In the final stretch the two altar boys run up to the front door as quickly as possible.  They put down the candlesticks without letting go of them.  Altar Boy No. 2 rings the doorbell.   Both boys glance up at the windows, then at their shoes, then again up at the windows, then again at their shoes, then again up at the windows, then suddenly, as if another shot has been fired, they glance up and to the right, above the woods, but no shot, none whatsoever, has been fired, while the two of them behave as though another shot has been fired.  Their reaction to the non-fired shot is the same as their reaction to the shot that actually was fired previously.  Altar Boy No. 1 gives a tug to the gown of Altar Boy No. 2 as if trying to smooth the wrinkles in the taller boy’s gown.  Whistle-blasts from the locomotive.  Release of steam from the locomotive.  The altar boys behave as though they were cold, as though they felt chilly.  Altar Boy No. 2 tries to pull a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of the suit he is wearing under the gown and fails to do so.  Meanwhile they both glance up at the windows.  For the skinny boy’s benefit, Altar Boy No. 1 produces the handkerchief from the suit he is wearing under his gown, gives the handkerchief to him, Altar Boy No. 2 blows his nose.  Both of them glance up at the windows.  Altar Boy No. 2 re-pockets the handkerchief.[4]  Both of them look up at the windows.  Now once again Altar Boy No. 2 rings the doorbell, several times this time, quite violently.  Then both of them glance at their shoes again.  Then, as if something has happened there, at the gate of the grounds.  Both of them are growing uneasy.  Now the door opens.  They hand over the candlesticks, as during the delivery of the funereal linen, nobody inside is visible.  The door is closed and bolted from within.  By the time the door is closing, the altar boys have assumed the same stiff, erect, military posture as that of the undertakers earlier.  The altar boys are still holding this posture when from inside the castle one hears a burst of loud, hysterical laughter from the SISTER of the late master of the estate.  No sooner has the laughter erupted than the altar boys are walking away from the door, after about four or five steps they are running away from it, in a right-to-left direction, through the gate of the grounds, all the while the sister’s laughter remains audible.  One sees the altar boys running through the gate of the grounds, then a bit farther, perhaps a third of the way to the Fairview Inn down the road.  Shot of the door.  Of the front of the castle.  The upper-left window of the second storey is opened.  Four seconds after the window opens, as if behind the window, hence in the ITALIAN’s room, several china dishes fall to the floor.  Three seconds later: the beginning of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1, from a record-player sitting on the floor of the room.  Again the front door of the castle.  The door is opened from within, the sister is standing in the doorway, she appears to be under the influence of the sudden burst of music from the window overhead, she loathes this music and, as becomes evident at this moment, she loathes the ITALIAN, who she knows has listened to no other music in years, has for years been playing to himself records of the Bartók string quartets one after the other and endlessly and who for all twenty-four hours that he has been in the house has incessantly been playing these quartets on the record-player that he brought with him from Florence.  For several seconds the sister stands fully erect, motionless, in the doorway, then she retreats back into the gloom of the doorway and reemerges with one of the candlesticks.  She places the candlestick against the wall next to the door and goes back inside and brings out the second candlestick and places it next to the first candlestick; glances up at the Italian’s window, picks up a candlestick, sets it back down, she has just found herself thinking I must lock the door and she locks the door after producing a large bunch of keys from her coarsely knitted black cardigan.  Glances up again at the Italian’s window, re-pockets the keys and grabs both candlesticks and carries the candlesticks to the conservatory.  While she is en route to the conservatory, the music emanating from the Italian’s window grows louder, very loud, suddenly stops when the sister reaches the conservatory.  From the village church the altar boys emerge with a black CANOPY[5] and proceed along the street.  We are shown the BAKER lowering the right blind[6] of his shop, which action produces a tremendous racket that frightens the altar boys as they pass by, they begin running with the canopy, but no sooner have they run ten or fifteen paces, than through the doorway of the butcher’s shop they glimpse a cow collapsing under the impact of a gunshot administered by the slaughtering apparatus. We are shown the c0llapse of the cow, the appalled, transfixed altar boys gazing at the slumped cow, the CANOPY, which they are holding on tightly to, sinks to the ground, they lift the CANOPY back up, the BUTCHER notices the altar boys, who, more and more appalled, are fascinated by the collapsed cow, the fabric of the CANOPY is lying in the street, the altar boys lift the CANOPY without taking their eyes off the cow, the butcher immediately proceeds to dismember the cow, first he fastens it to the chain by which he hoists the carcass against the wall, one sees him hoist the cow on zinc hooks higher and higher against the wall, now, as he cuts the cow open from top to bottom, its innards gush out, the altar boys hold on more tightly to the support poles of the canopy, the intestines burst apart, everything happens very quickly, one is not merely aware of the possibility of doing such a thing, one now sees that in a brief half-hour a cow can be killed and hung up and taken to pieces and prepared, that we are watching a butcher of great expertise at work, even though the altar boys see this every day on their way to school, they are now fascinated anew by the butcher’s technique, they are captivated by his skill.  The camera alternates between showing the interior of the butcher’s shop and showing the altar boys peering into the butcher’s shop.  Now from the background area of the butcher’s shop emerges the BUTCHER’S HELPER, who sets down on the floor a vat for the collection of innards, then kicks the vat over to the butcher’s feet.  Now the helper notices the altar boys and exclaims, Gitthehaillawnouttahere, [7] while the butcher takes no notice of the altar boys.  Once again the helper cries, Gitthehaillawnouttahere!, whereupon the altar boys (filmed from within the shop) run away.  Now we are shown the windows of several houses in the village, and behind the windows villagers watching the altar boys running with the CANOPY, after ten or twelve windows with their appertaining faces have been shown, there is a view from above, and moving left to right, of the front of the old people’s home, first one window after another, behind which one cannot make out any faces, even though of course there are faces behind them, then, in a repeat take beginning midway through, the same windows with the appertaining faces: a gunshot is fired, then the sound of the locomotive, then: the VILLAGE PRIEST is walking across the village square, the camera is stationed at the statue of the Virgin Mary, the priest approaches the camera from the war memorial, with a prayer-book under his arm, the entire village square is empty, at the filling station is standing the female FILLING STATION ATTENDANT who says, mornin‘[8] as the priest passes by her at a distance of ten meters, then as the priest continues on his way she stops paying attention to him and goes into her house.  The priest has reached the statue of the Virgin Mary, there is a sudden clamor of hundreds of squealing pigs to the right in the background, a clamor that gradually, , in waves, swells to a hideous porcine roar like that of thousands of pigs, all the while that the camera continues motionlessly to stare at the empty village square, and to film ever more urgently, albeit ever more motionlessly, the empty village square, the porcine roar acquires an intensity that is attainable only in huge fattening farms (or in St. Marx[9]), where thousands if not tens of thousands of pigs are kept in one place at the same time, it sounds as if all of a sudden tens of thousands of pigs are being fed at the same time.  After twenty seconds during which the absolutely empty village square has been filmed to the accompaniment of the ever-strengthening porcine roar, an even more intense porcine roar begins at the very instant at which the priest, as though he has just paid a brief visit to a house behind the statue of the Virgin Mary, is walking back across the village square, this time without a prayer-book, the priest walks across the entire square very calmly, very equably and one gets the feeling that although the porcine roar is unbearably loud, the priest does not hear it at all, he hears absolutely nothing, despite the fact that the roar of the ten thousand pigs is a real sound.  The priest, having finished crossing the entire village square in the direction of the church, vanishes behind the war memorial, but the camera continues filming the village square a further six or seven seconds, the porcine roar abruptly ceases.  Three seconds of absolute silence, followed by the sudden outpouring of an entire large schoolroom-load of schoolchildren of both sexes from the school behind the war memorial on to the square, at which the camera remains pointed, accompanied by a clamor of shouting and screaming that, like the porcine roar earlier, swells in waves, the schoolroom-load of schoolchildren inundates the square, girls with long pigtails, boys with sailcloth caps on their heads, one sees almost nothing but pigtails and sailcloth caps, which inundate the square, the camera is initially stationed at the statue of the Virgin Mary and filming the class of schoolchildren from the front, then at the war memorial and filming the class of schoolchildren from behind, until the schoolroom-load of schoolchildren has traversed the entire village square and is heading downhill towards Gaspoltshofen[10], through the narrow ravine on the right side of the statue of the Virgin Mary, the roar of the class of schoolchildren reaches its pinnacle of intensity at the moment when the very closely packed crowd of schoolchildren has reached the middle of the village square, and subsides as the class of school children moves farther away and downhill towards Gaspoltshofen.  After the last of the schoolchildren streaming downhill towards Gaspoltshofen is gone, the empty, village square, now strewn with a couple of sailcloth caps and two bookbags dropped by the schoolchildren, is shown (from the perspective of the statue of the Virgin Mary) without sound for a further five seconds, then the camera cuts to the front of the old people’s home, shows the old people’s home in such a way that one gets the impression that it is a completely airtight stone cage.  For five or six seconds the old people’s home is shown, the faces of its inmates, crowded against the windows, are clearly visible, suddenly the locomotive in the distance, then the camera cuts to the bakery, whose second, left blind is being lowered, very noisily, like the first one earlier.  From the butcher’s shop a bucket of bloody water[11] is emptied on to the street, the camera shows the water coursing along the street in rivulets to the accompaniment of a series of noises that suggest that the butcher’s shop is being rinsed out.  That it is being swept, then rinsed out again.  Now (all the while that the camera continues filming the course of the bloody water) footsteps, the ever-louder footsteps of the POSTMAN, of whom one initially sees only his rubber boots, followed by his trousers, coat, shoulders, his colossal load of sympathy mail, which he is without a doubt carrying up to the castle, one realizes immediately that the load is made up entirely of messages of condolence addressed to the castle, a hello[12] is called out from the butcher’s shop the moment the postman is passing by it, whereupon the camera begins following the postman, who from the butcher’s shop proceeds to the bakery, while the postman is walking up the street to the bakery, the locomotive is heard over and over again, the locomotive is not making any headway, its wheels spin in place, it lets off steam, etc.  A gunshot is fired, the postman turns aside, on to the uphill road leading to the castle.  The camera shows the altar boys, who are halfway along this road to the gate of the grounds, moving more slowly, suddenly and surreally, they begin running up the hill, they lose their grip on the CANOPY, which falls to the ground, they lift the CANOPY back up, they reach the gate of the grounds.  The camera is filming them from behind.   Now the String Quartet No. 1 is heard from the Italian’s open window as the altar boys approach the front door.  Having reached the door, Altar Boy No. 2 rings the bell, pulling forcefully on the rope.  The two of them glance up at the Italian’s open window.  The door is unlocked and opened, there are deferential nods from the altar boys, the sister appears in the doorway.  As previously, she is dressed completely in black, but now she is also wearing a black kerchief on her head, tucked under her arm are an enameled washbasin and a pressed and folded handkerchief.   She makes a sign to the altar boys to wait, vanishes back into the doorway, but immediately reemerges and walks past the altar boys towards the conservatory, the altar boys follow her.  After ten steps she turns around, the altar boys draw to a halt, she walks back to the front door and locks it, pockets the bunch of keys in her cardigan, again walks past the altar boys, the altar boys follow her to the conservatory.  The camera cuts to the open window, the string-quartet music increases in volume.  The camera cuts to the gate of the grounds from which the butcher’s helper is approaching the front door with a rack[13] full of meat slung over his shoulder.  He glances up at the Italian’s window, his rubber boots are sturdy and have red soles, his trousers, tucked into the rubber boots, are black, he is wearing a black butcher’s waistcoat with white mother-of-pearl buttons.  Halfway to the door he infers that the sister is not in the castle, draws to a halt, glances over at the conservatory.  Continues to the front door, rings the bell.  The door is opened, he is relieved of the rack, the empty rack is returned to him, he slings the rack over his shoulder and walks back through the entire grounds to the gate of the grounds, disappears.  Suddenly the sound of a window, the SPANIARD’s window, being opened on the upper part of the right side of the castle.  Whereupon the camera cuts to a view looking up across the surface of the park at the front of the castle, where a window on the upper part of the right side, on the second storey, is indeed open, hence there are two open windows, the Italian’s window and the Spaniard’s window.   Through his window the Spaniard is heard coughing a violent, prolonged succession of coughs, one imagines that the Spaniard has a cold, has just now stood up, is now coughing, now the Spaniard opens the window wider.  The camera continues to film the Spaniard’s window for five, perhaps six, seconds, suddenly the string-quartet music stops, eight seconds of complete soundlessness, during which one sees the Spaniard’s hands, together with his sleeved forearms, busying themselves with various toiletries, a hairbrush, a comb, clippers, files, a shaving-brush, razor et cetera on the windowsill.  A sudden burst of laughter from the altar boys wafts over from the conservatory.  Complete silence.  More loud laughter from the altar boys.  Complete silence.  The camera now focuses on the Spaniard’s hands busying themselves with his toiletries on the windowsill.   Nervousness.  Now the camera with tremendous speed follows a downward path along the surface of the grounds until it comes to be centered on the altar boys, who are now standing without the CANOPY in front of the conservatory, at a meter’s distance, and staring at the sister, who is standing opposite them, and whose face is at first motionless, fixed in a stare, and who then suddenly shakes her head and says: don’t laugh.  There’s nothing to laugh at.  The altar boys turn around and run away from her, the camera focuses on them, then again on the sister, who remains motionlessly standing in place and gazing after the altar boys.  Once the altar boys are gone, she breathes a sigh of relief and walks back to the castle, along the way, a withered tree-branch falls on her, she draws to a halt, on the ground under the branch is a dirty sailcloth cap, she picks up the cap and pockets it in her cardigan, looks to see whether anybody noticed her do this, thinks, “nobody noticed me do that” and resumes walking.  Now the string-quartet music is very soft, the sister passes under and by the Italian’s window.  Without stopping the sister glances up at the Spaniard’s window, draws to a halt, notices his hands, which are visible from down below, and are still unrelentingly busying themselves with the toiletries.  At the same time she pulls the bunch of keys. along with the sailcloth cap, out of her cardigan, sniffs at the sailcloth cap and re-pockets the sailcloth cap and unlocks the front door and takes a step back and looks up at the Italian’s window, from which louder quartet-music is now emanating, suddenly a discharged gunshot behind the castle, the sister looks to the right towards the sky above the woods, as if her gaze is following a flock of birds that has taken flight from behind the castle, but nothing is visible in the sky.  She stands in the doorway and loudly calls across to the conservatory: Fanny! Fanny!  Whereupon, from her point of view looking outward from the doorway, Fanny emerges from the conservatory with a laundry basket full of well-worn menswear--garments and shoes—that has obviously been removed from the body of the late master, and begins walking over from the conservatory towards the front door of the castle.   Once Fanny has reached the front door, the sister sticks her hand into the laundry basket and lifts the pair of trousers at the top of the pile into the air, looks contemplatively at the trousers, drops them back into the basket and says, calmly but for all that peremptorily: this has all got to be got rid of!  Get rid of it! , whereupon Fanny steps through the doorway into the castle, the sister following her.  From within the door is shut, locked.  The quartet music now grows clearer, louder, violent coughing from the Spaniard’s window.  The camera makes a right-hand turn around the corner of the building and moves along the entire lateral/south side of the castle until it reaches the kitchen window, then  penetrates the kitchen.  In the kitchen, the female COOK, aged about fifty, with a white cook’s head-kerchief, is instantly recognizable as a cook, the three GIRLS (Nos. 1, 2, and 3) in the kitchen and sitting at the table next to the door giving on to the passageway, as soon as they are captured by the camera they rise and exit into the passageway, the cook glances at the door, through which the HOUSEBOY is just entering, he takes a seat at the table, the cook clears away the remains of the girls’ meal and sets sausage and bread and a large glass of cider on the table.  The houseboy is wearing rubber boots, black, visibly dirty work trousers, a workman’s jacket, which is covered in patches, over a frayed wool sweater, on his head he has the sailcloth cap that the sister pocketed in her cardigan earlier.  He drains the glass of cider in single gulp, the cook pours him a second glass.  She sweeps up the room, the whole operation is very noisy, and involves much footwork, the houseboy studies her fat calves, varicose veins, et cetera.  Against the wall behind the houseboy, various workmen’s garments hanging in piles on a hook board.  The cook steps into the adjacent larder and reenters with a large bowl full of cooked potatoes, sits down next the houseboy and begins peeling potatoes.  She looks over at the clock and says: happast nahhn, whereupon the houseboy also looks at the clock and says: happast nahhn.  The houseboy is short, thin, aged seventeen to nineteen.  He suddenly leaps to his feet and drains the glass of cider and slips on a thoroughly tattered Hubertus coat that he has just taken down from the hook board with lightning speed, like an animal.  Suddenly he sticks his right hand into the bowl of potatoes and pulls out a potato and crushes it so that the mashed potato gushes out between his fingers, and drops the pulverized potato on to floor, all the while looking the simultaneously pretty much unfazed cook steadily in the eye.  The cook calmly exclaims: Filthy pig!  The houseboy is about to step out into the passageway when Fanny enters with the laundry basket full of well-worn menswear, the houseboy is blocking her path, but she makes her way into the room despite this, straight-away Fanny looks at the clock and says: half-past nahhn and the houseboy steps out into the passageway and Fanny says: steelonly bout happast nahhninhere.  The camera cuts to the gate of the grounds, the postman is approaching with the sympathy mail.  He is carrying not only a valise and a rucksack full of messages of condolence but also a stack of letters cradled in his arms.  He is trying as he walks to get a good look up at the two open windows in the front of the castle, but he fails to do so, he can see neither above nor beyond the stack of letters, during the last few steps of his approach to the front door the quartet music coming from the Italian’s window vehemently intensifies and suddenly stops.  Silence as the postman now, at the front door, looks point-blank up at the Italian’s window after setting the stack of letters down beside the door.  He empties the rucksack, turns the valise upside-down, everything ends up in a big heap to the left side of the front door.  He rings the doorbell and walks back through the grounds to the gate of the grounds, the camera , now stationed at the gate, first centers on the postman, then moves past the postman to the pile of mail beside the front door, the camera distinctly shows the pile to consist of hundreds of unusually large, black-bordered envelopes containing messages of condolence, hundreds of messages of condolence from all over the world.   Once the camera has lingered over this condolence mail to sufficiently impressive effect, we hear the first few measures of the St. Lucia Funeral March[14] being played by the Wolfsegg wind band down in front of the Fairview Inn.  From this point onwards, the sole thing of interest is the march music, all the while the viewer’s attention is to be centered on the first ten or twenty measures of the Santa Lucia Funeral March.  The camera films the pile of condolence mail for about four seconds, the band strikes up down in the village, the music sounds as though it is coming from the open windows of the Fairview Inn, after the first three measures, during which the camera cuts away from the pile of mail and successively to a leftward-moving sweep of the castle wall and a downward-moving sweep from the castle across the village, showing everything up to and including the complex of buildings comprising the inn, twice so far the band has struck up and left off, the march music is rhythmically disorganized, sluggish, the band leaves off again, strikes up again, as the camera shows the horizon between the conservatory and the castle, then makes a leftward-moving circular sweep beginning at the inn-building and concluding at the conservatory, at which moment complete silence ensues.  The string-quartet music, once again the String Quartet No. 1, begins playing through the Italian’s open window, which is now shown, now in the window one sees the Italian, tall, with suspenders stretched over the shoulders of his white shirt, the camera is centered on the window, in which the Italian is standing, suddenly he sticks his hands into the suspenders,[15] stretches them as far as they can be stretched, and suddenly withdraws his hands.  Now the camera is in the kitchen, where the cook at the stove is bursting into loud laughter while in the midst of divvying up the portions of a breakfast for at least twelve or fifteen people, everything is on trays, on little trays for one person and oversize trays for eight or ten little trays, at the edge of the table the houseboy with the sailcloth cap on his head is now standing, in his right hand he is holding a white hen, which he has presumably just strangled, he lifts the dead hen high above his head and tears the hen’s head off with lightning speed, the cook, with a tray cradled in her arms, a tray bearing several steaming pots of coffee, is not in the least bit shocked, unyieldingly exclaims: Filthy pig!  The houseboy opens the door halfway for her, with her right foot she kicks the door the rest of the way open and exits.  The boy tosses the dead headless hen into a bowl on the stove, crouches with lightning speed into the chair at the table, pulls off his rubber boots, spits on the kitchen floor.  Now the camera cuts to the upper hallway, on the second storey, and simultaneously to the door of the Italian’s room (on the right) and the door of the Spaniard’s room (on the left).  Then to all the doors to the left of these, then back to the first two doors, then to all the doors to the right of them, and finally to the staircase leading downstairs.  From this staircase the cook emerges with the large tray and sets the tray on a side table on the landing on the left.  She takes one of the small trays from the large one and walks up to the door opposite the landing, knocks, enters, and comes back out without the tray, takes a second small tray from the large one and carries it to the door next to the first one and knocks and hands over the tray and comes back and takes up a third tray and walks with it up to the third door and knocks and waits and the door is opened and she is relieved of the tray, she walks back to the large tray and takes up a fourth small tray and walks up to the fourth door on the right, knocks, hands over the breakfast, comes back again, takes up a fifth tray and walks with it now to the left to the fifth door, knocks, the door is opened, she hands over the tray, walks back again, walks to the sixth door with a tray, makes two more trips, each time with one small tray to a single door.  The empty large tray is shown, Fanny takes away the large empty tray after setting a second full large tray from downstairs on the little table, and goes downstairs with the empty tray.  The cook takes from the new full tray a small tray and walks with it up to the door of the Italian, she knocks, one hears the Italian in his room saying: si, si, the door opens (loud quartet music from within the room), the cook hands over the tray, returns to the large tray and takes up a second tray and walks with it up to the Spaniard’s room, she knocks, it is opened without a word, she is relieved of the tray, she returns, she has reached the landing, from below the sister’s voice: Anna, Anna!  The cook stops, listens, from below once again: Anna, Anna!  While the cook in the hallway is listening out for sounds from downstairs, the Italian’s door opens, the Italian stands, in the background, in the doorway and listens, shuts the door again.  Cut to a shot of the front door of the castle from the grounds.   The sister steps outside, shouts back into the doorway: Fanny!  Fanny emerges with an incredibly huge roll of adhesive plaster and several folded ironed bed sheets, once she is outside, the sister shuts and locks the door.  Followed by Fanny, the sister walks to the conservatory, the quartet music is first soft, then suddenly ceases, beginning of the funeral march, now suddenly resonant, as if conveyed by a blast of Föhn air.  A gunshot is fired in the woods behind the castle.  The funeral march is very loud, the sister looks towards where the sound of the funeral march is coming from, Fanny also looks over there.  The camera soars over the treetops, on the side of the castle facing the village, below the grounds, towards the Fairview Inn, moves through the high windows of the inn into the assembly-room and zooms in on the wind band.  The front of the building bears the inscription THE FAIRVIEW INN in capital letters.  The WOLFSEGG WIND BAND in a corner of the room facing the village, in the middle of a rehearsal, all of them, even the conductor, in their regular weekday clothes, they are sitting in softwood chairs, other softwood chairs of the same type are unoccupied except by beer glasses, the room is dirty, the decorations from a dance that was held here in the assembly-room about two days ago have still not been cleared away, the room has not been aired out once since, on the floor are scattered heaps of paper scraps, worn-out placemats, rags, shoes, et cetera, boxes that have been trampled flat, the camera allows one to see quite distinctly a placemat bearing the inscription EGGENBERGER BEER.   Chinese lanterns, paper streamers, most of them in tatters, hang from the ceiling.   Along the walls pictures of curling championship teams, cup trophies, et cetera, in the corner of the room cattycornered to the musicians a pile of curling-sticks.  Next to them a stack of broad, old, mostly wooden benches for use in the inn’s courtyard.  On the coat-racks along the wall hang the musician’s coats, on the coat-rack at the bar on the left side of the door, workmen’s outfits, a broom, et cetera, several so-called stain-shields[16], boiler suits, hats, et cetera.  On the right side of the door a large death-notice, it has a broad black border and a large cross over an illegible block of text.  The death-notice has been affixed to the wall with a thumbtack, it is unquestionably the master’s death-notice, it is bigger than any other death-notice ever printed, on the other hand it is practically indecipherable, one can see that the text is printed in large, clear characters, but one cannot decipher it.  The camera affords a distinct, in-focus view of the death-notice.  The camera penetrates the assembly-room, the conductor is standing in rolled-up shirtsleeves and beating time, the band are all seated, this is a completely ordinary rehearsal for tomorrow’s funeral.  Profile view of the conductor, of the nape of his neck, his face, his nose.  Three times the march abruptly commences: the conductor raises his baton, the band plays, three times in succession the conductor signals the musicians to stop by tapping his baton very loudly against the podium.   During this rehearsal the camera first shows the landlady standing in the doorframe, the landlady gazes apathetically at the band.  Suddenly the landlady notices an empty glass, she picks up the glass from one of the chairs near the musicians, walks with it over to the bar, fills the glass and carries it back to the chair, once again leans against the doorframe.  The camera singles out a few individual musicians in succession.  After three false starts, a full third of the march is very calmly played through, all the while the camera is focused on the figure of the landlady standing in the doorframe.  The camera is now the epitome of thoughtless intrusiveness.  The conductor’s back is shown, the camera slowly moves along the conductor’s entire back from the waistband upwards.  The musicians have unbuttoned their jackets.  They are sweating.   One of them has not unbuttoned his jacket and his neighbor says to him: unbunn your jaacket and the addressee unbuttons his jacket.  Even before the first third of the march has been played through, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 begins softly playing, the march music grows softer, the quartet music increases in intensity, the image of the band blurs, becomes completely indistinct, the front of the castle is unrecognizable, crescendoing of the Bartók music, the image is suddenly, all at once, clear.  In front of the front door is parked the hearse, the undertakers, the driver, the front-seat passenger, have already gotten out of the car, rung the bell, the rear door of the hearse is wide open, the driver has a large black catafalque-cloth with a large embroidered silver cross at its center draped over his arms, the passenger is carrying a black velvet cushion of the kind used for displaying medals, but with no medals on it, the two of them stand and wait, twice glancing up at the windows, for ten seconds, the door is opened, they are relieved of the catafalque-cloth and the cushion, by whom we do not see, with their caps doffed they nod in salutation, get into the car without having shut the rear door beforehand, drive off.  The sister emerges with comb and hairbrush, locks up, walks over to the conservatory.  As she walks away from the front door, a sudden cessation of the quartet music.  The sister turns around, because the quartet music irritates her, and looks up at the Italian’s window.  One can tell that she loathes this music and loathes this person who incessantly regales himself with this music.  En route to the conservatory, she meticulously examines the brush and comb for marks of uncleanliness, when she is halfway to the conservatory a fragment of the march music is heard, the march music breaks off as the sister disappears into the conservatory.  The camera is behind her the whole time.  The camera now cuts to a tracking shot of the master’s completely naked corpse lying on the not completely assembled, the not even half-assembled, softwood catafalque, hence to a shot beginning at head of the catafalque and approaching the sister as she enters from outside.  The corpse’s head is bandaged from top to eyebrows, the camera first shows the bandaged head, then moves along the rest of the corpse, which really is completely naked, towards its splayed feet, between the feet one views the sister as she enters, then draws to a halt in the doorway of the conservatory, where she stands for two seconds, after which she suddenly runs up to the corpse.  Stands fully erect for three seconds before the corpse of her brother.  She observes him closely, as if wondering whether there is actually no trace whatsoever of movement in him.  In her now large, hyper-distinct face one sees: there is no longer any trace whatsoever of movement in her dead brother.  Now to the right of the catafalque are shown the washbasin filled with water, the handkerchief hanging over the rim of the washbasin, next to the washbasin an open box, out of which steel pins for the construction of the catafalque are hanging.  A hammer, pincers, a monkey wrench, a piece of thick black velvet attached to the barely half-built catafalque almost by way of a sample, the piece terminates in a large bale on the surface of the wooden platform, by means of this shot it first becomes clear that the catafalque is resting on a theatrical platform made of wood, a platform that takes up half the conservatory and now one can see that the platform is surmounted by a piece of décor for a stage play, everything looks as though a rehearsal for a stage play has been suddenly interrupted, as if in the middle of the rehearsal the players have been obliged to break off, to leave everything standing and lying about.  The play in question would be one dating from the era of Commedia dell’Arte, like one of Goldoni’s plays, in the middle background a tall window affording a view of a large park with a thematic water fountain of lustrous colors, one gazes upon a pond on whose banks there are water-spewing figures amateurishly painted on paper or cheap plastic.  To the right a door as tall as the window, next to it a sofa upholstered in English linen.  On the sofa are costumes for a ball, the entire stage, especially the floor, is strewn with ball costumes, a fan on the sofa, a hat with ostrich feathers.  A silk cloak such as would be used in a comedy of errors.  The lot is Venetian.  In contrast to the castle, here everything is flamboyant, penetrating, not a trace of restraint, everything seems to be saying about the castle, here we put on plays, that place has nothing to do with us.  To the left of the door an unfolded folding gaming table, underneath it costumes, to the left of the gaming-table a folding screen, underneath it lies a riding-saddle.  A horsewhip on the floor, on the gaming-table a teddy bear.  All the while the camera is showing all this as calmly as possible, is showing the horrified, forlorn image of an amateur playhouse at a great estate, scrolls/ledgers on the gaming-table, a trumpet on the floor, individual costumes and objects that are immediately perceivable, imposing in a certain respect, in another like playing cards exfoliated from the deck in successive dozens, is showing all this very quickly, to the incessant accompaniment of the funeral march wafting up from the Fairview Inn.  One gets the impression that this is an amateur playhouse at a great estate, a playhouse in which a play has been in rehearsal for weeks on end, a playhouse in which all of a sudden, completely unexpectedly, a dead man has been laid out, the dead man, the master of the estate.   The sister has been leaning on the foot of the catafalque, apart from the (very faint) strains of the funeral march wafting up from the inn, nothing can be heard.  She is thinking: there lies my brother, for the first time in my life I have him in my power.  One perceives her sudden greatness at the catafalque.  She takes the handkerchief and dips it in the washbasin and wrings it out and wipes away a piece of encrusted blood on the dead man’s temple.  The location of the piece of encrusted blood, which has evidently seeped out of the bandage-swathed head, indicates the suicide’s entry-wound.  She slowly wipes away the piece of blood, then lifts first the left arm, which is lying right against the dead man’s upper body, and sets it down some distance away, on the surface of the catafalque, so that she can accomplish her aim of more thoroughly wiping down the corpse, then does the same with the right one.  Then she moves apart the legs of the corpse so that its penis is completely exposed.  Using the moistened handkerchief, very painstakingly, her face motionless, she wipes down the corpse from head to toe, wipes down the dead man’s penis.  Once she has completely wiped down the corpse, pushed its arms and legs back together, she takes up the brush and makes as if to brush the dead man’s hair, suddenly she realizes: his head is swathed in bandages, obviously I cannot brush a single hair of it, horrified by her own absent-mindedness, she flings the brush into the washbasin, the brush soaks in the water.  Then she flings the comb into the basin.  Suddenly behind her Fanny appears with a large white enameled pitcher full of hot water.   Fanny has bumped into the doorframe, the sister turns but not all the way round, she says: he is clean enough.  Fanny sets the jug of hot water down on the platform and takes up the washbasin with the brush and comb soaking in it.  Fanny says inquiringly: emptyiddout?  The sister does not answer.  Fanny takes the brush and comb out of the washbasin and sets the brush and the comb down on the platform and walks out of the conservatory with the basin and empties the washbasin and comes back in with the empty washbasin, fills the washbasin with hot water from the jug, dips the handkerchief in the washbasin and gives the handkerchief to the sister, who meanwhile has lifted up the dead man’s head and now says: hold his head! and Fanny holds the dead man’s head and the sister wipes it down with the handkerchief, she devotes especially through attention to the neck.  From the rooms in the second storey of the castle the small breakfast trays, now bearing dirty dishes, are being expelled one by one on to small tables beside the doors, one cannot see who is putting out the trays and setting them on the tables, one sees doors opening and closing and hands setting down the trays and hears the noise occasioned by these proceedings.  Carrying a giant tray full of these small trays, the cook enters the kitchen, the camera is filming from the window, the cook sets everything down on the table next to the stove, meanwhile on the stove lunch is already steaming in large pots, on the sideboard heaps of silver plates for lunch, sets of cutlery et cetera all for at least thirty or thirty-five people.  The cook goes to the window, looks out at the arriving people, who arouse her interest.  Next to the heap of dirty dishes from breakfast she mixes a salad in large bowls.  The houseboy enters, he is carrying twelve dead white hens hanging on short lengths of string from a broomstick, the cook looks at him standing in the doorway with the twelve dead hens on the broomstick and, pointing to a large enameled bowl on the windowsill, says: put ’em over thar! The houseboy walks over to the window and slides the twelve dead hens off the broomstick and into the enameled bowl.  The boy says to the cook: surveyors out thaar, surveyin’  Stinkin’ surveyors!  The cook echoes: Stinkin’ surveyors!   After five or six seconds, the houseboy, having seated himself at the table, stretched out his feet, made himself comfortable, says: the Eyetalian’s already up!  To which the cook, glancing at the clock replies: ’bout time.  Suddenly an electric bell above the kitchen door loudly rings.  The cook tightens the knot on her head-kerchief and exits the room, the camera shows her walking the entire length of the hallway to the front door.  She opens the front door.  On the doorstep is standing the POSTMASTER with a telegram, he says: Isthra Mr Selvani here?  Gotta telegram frim.  The cook nods, takes the telegram from him, walks back the entire length of the hallway to the landing of the staircase, which she begins to ascend, after she has cleared a couple of stairs the camera cuts away from her.  The postmaster hurries away from the front door and across the grounds, then the camera from its station at the gate of the grounds swivels upward and zooms in on the Italian’s window, then past the window through the room and on the door, which opens, the cook is standing in the doorway.  Next the camera is looking in from the passageway, the quartet music is very loud, as before it is Quartet No. 2.  The cook hands over the telegram, the Italian is not seen.  She shuts the door.  Coughing from the Spaniard’s room, the cook glances at the Spaniard’s door, goes to the landing, runs downstairs, until only the back of her head is still visible, the camera cuts to a view from the lower landing, the cook is running towards the camera and down the stairs.  Silence.  A brief burst of quartet music, which immediately breaks off.  The Italian’s window, open.  Diminuendo of the quartet music, which has just now started playing again very loudly, the march wafting up from the Fairview Inn as the camera tracks leftward from the Italian’s window, shows everything up to and including the conservatory, the conservatory wall, finally to its left, the entire inn-complex, through the gate of the inn-complex three, four cows are being driven by the houseboy, driven through the gate into the stable to its left.  The houseboy alone in the courtyard with spread legs, which he suddenly crosses without falling over, the camera focuses on his face, then suddenly on his right hand, with which he is grabbing his penis, tightly squeezing his penis.  From the conservatory the sister’s voice calling:  Fanny!  Fanny!  The camera is centered on the front door, Fanny emerges from the front door carrying a laundry basket with a stack of linen handkerchiefs, pillowcases, moves to the conservatory, running as fast as she can.  Halfway to the conservatory she sets the basket down and runs back, pounds on the front door so loudly that her blows echo.  At the Italian’s window the Italian appears, looks down, the Spaniard’s window, the Spaniard at the window, looks down, the camera shows the entire front of the castle, the Italian and the Spaniard are looking through their windows down at the grounds.  For ten seconds we have been hearing the sound of a tractor, which is now driving through the gate of the grounds, and carrying hooks lying on long beams of softwood, evidently posts for the construction of the catafalque.  The tractor proceeds into the grounds and travels, as the Italian and the Spaniard now look through their windows at it, all the way to the front door and stops in front of the front door.  Fanny has lifted the laundry basket and is now looking over at the tractor.  The TRACTOR-DRIVER is wearing a brown motorcyclist’s cap that is pulled down over his ears and a brown leather jacket, the camera cuts to Fanny, then to the driver, to Fanny, to the driver, to Fanny who says:  Why’d the tractor go to the front door instead of to the conservatory?  Now, one at a time, beginning at its upper-left corner, all the windows on the front of the castle are opened, not in an orderly fashion but rather a disorderly one, people look down at the tractor, in conformity with the guests’ varying reaction speeds, the windows are opened, semi-simultaneously but not exactly simultaneously, the third window from the left on the second storey is more or less the first one to open, at more or less the same time as the second window to the right on the ground floor, the third window from the right on the second storey, et cetera, all the windows on the front side are suddenly opened as if in a sudden pathological attack of panic, but the camera films the whole to-do calmly, in three or four windows, in addition to the Italian’s and the Spaniard’s, faces are visible, all these faces are looking down at the tractor, all the while Fanny has been holding the laundry basket in a raised position and gazing steadily at the tractor.  The driver has alighted.  Now the Italian suddenly shuts his window, the quartet music is silenced, the tractor-driver rings the doorbell, glances up.  He is shown in profile.  As if he expects the door to open now that the tractor is parked, completely motionless, in front of the front door, now that its engine has been switched off, its parking brake engaged.  But the door does not open.  For twelve seconds the driver sits in the tractor and the door does not open.  The driver alights and rings the bell.  Only now does Fanny set the laundry basket down and run to the tractor and tell the driver he should drive from the front door to the conservatory, she says something unintelligible, its upshot is: to the conservatory!  The driver climbs on to the tractor, starts the engine, once again sits in the tractor completely motionless and with head held high, Fanny sits down beside him in the passenger’s seat, the tractor travels to the conservatory, but now as the tractor travels to the conservatory the camera shows the front of the castle, on which one at a time, and indeed in the same order as they were opened before, all the windows are being shut.  Now the tractor has reached the conservatory, the driver switches off the engine, the quartet music is suddenly heard again, very loud.  Four or five laborers unload beams and posts from the tractor.  Fanny comes into view from the right, the camera is stationed at the entrance of the conservatory, and she enters the conservatory.  From the interior of the conservatory one hears the sounds occasioned by the completion of the construction of the catafalque, by the hanging of drapery, et cetera, as the camera shows the laborers who are working slowly on account of the master’s death.  They are imbued with an awareness of the occurrence of the master’s death, one hears only the sound of the unloading of the planks and posts, along with those of the extraction of nails by a pair of pincers et cetera from inside the conservatory, but these sounds slowly die away and are supplanted by the sound of an old man chopping wood, whom the camera now shows, the old man is chopping wood behind the old people’s home, the image of the old man gradually becomes more distinct, the pile of chopped wood is at least twice as tall as the old man, one gets the impression that the wood-chopping is growing ridiculous as the woodpile grows, the scene gives the impression that the woodpile is going to end up being at least ten times as tall as it now is, so that the wood-chopping will be ten times as ridiculous, as pitiful, an old woman, who is at least a third taller than the old man, enters, bringing the old man an afternoon snack, bread, a piece of stangen cheese on a stoneware plate, she sets the plate on the chopping-block.  Suddenly one sees the butcher chopping meat through the door of the butcher’s shop.  The baker through the door of the bakery.  The village square.  The war memorial.  The statue of the Virgin Mary.  The filling station attendant at the filling station.  The baker raising the right blind of his shop.  The village priest at the window[17] of the parsonage.  In front of the Fairview Inn a car parks, TWO GENTLEMEN get out, carry bags of luggage into the inn, gentlemen with bags of luggage enter the bed-and-breakfast on the village square, on the road leading uphill from Ottnang to Wolfsegg several cars are traveling past in succession and being observed by the land-surveyor, the camera first shows the land-surveyor and the cars, then shows the cars as seen through the land-surveyor’s scope, then SEVERAL land-surveyors at the churchyard.  A lengthy sequence, in which they peer up at the castle, into the village, into the mountains, through their scopes, in which they observe one another standing opposite one another, there are four or five tripods in the churchyard, a tripod at the wall of the churchyard, a land-surveyor in one[18] of the windows of the parsonage.  The locomotive’s whistle, its sound suggests the locomotive has remained stuck all this time.  The village square is shown, it is already half full of the cars owned by people who have evidently come to attend the master’s funeral.  The camera is in the window of the parsonage, and centered on the grandfather clock inside, which indicates that the time is half-past eleven.  At this moment the uproar of several schoolroom-loads of school children, of all of Wolfsegg’s schoolroom-loads of schoolchildren, as the camera remains centered on the dial of the clock, the uproar and ultimately the roar of the schoolroom-loads lasts until the schoolroom-loads have traversed the entire village square from the war memorial to the statue of the Virgin Mary, but this traversal of the village square is not shown, the camera remains centered on the dial, the roar reaches its pinnacle of volume when the children have reached the middle of the square, slowly diminishes as the children run past the war memorial, dies away completely once the last child has passed the statue of the Virgin Mary and is headed downhill towards Gaspoltshofen.  Immediately after the roar has died away,  the camera cuts to the village square, which is devoid of children as during the preceding shot of it, one sees that the roar has been here, now the roar is gone, everything is empty, one’s impression is that it is not only the village square that is empty, that everything is empty, an emptiness that is only accentuated by the large number of cars, the position of the camera is in front of the bakery and behind the war memorial.   And from the path running alongside the war memorial, the path that the schoolchildren have presumably just followed in their downhill stampede, the altar boys (Nos. 1 and 2) now emerge with two black flagpoles with black flags on them, they carry the two flags across the entire village square towards the camera, this shot, in its depiction of the breadth of the village square, is reminiscent of de Chirico.  As the altar boys approach the camera, various blinds are lowered and curtains are drawn, first on the left side of the square, then on the right, the lowering of the blinds occasions a tremendous din, additionally, in defiance of natural law, one hears the curtains being drawn, the atmosphere, as the altar boys approach the camera, is an absolutely artificial one.  But the altar boys are completely oblivious of the lowering of the blinds and the drawing of the curtains, they fail to register them.  The altar boys are still eight, nine paces away from the camera, when the church-clock begins to strike mutedly, festively, the camera remains pointed at the village square, the altar boys have passed the camera , the hearse approaches from behind the statue of the Virgin Mary, as though it is heading up from Gaspoltshofen, on the roof of the hearse lie three large wreaths, the hearse travels slowly across the entire village square past the camera, behind the hearse the filling station attendant crosses the village square, goes into the house opposite the filling station, once she is in the house, a man aged about forty, in rubber boots and a boiler suit and with a sailcloth cap on his  head, emerges from the house and walks over to the filling station and there sits down in the saddle of a motorcycle that has hitherto not been seen, starts the engine, and drives the motorcycle past the statue of the Virgin Mary downhill towards Gaspoltshofen.  From the Gaspotshofen side comes a large pig-transporter full of squealing pigs, it travels across the village square past the war memorial.  The camera is stationed at the gate of the grounds.  The altar boys, coming up from the village square, draw level with the Fairview Inn, they are running, and running uphill with the flagpoles causes them no difficulties whatsoever, they wave the flagpoles like children running for fun.  Three-quarters of their way up the hill they suddenly stumble and fall, then stand back up and begin running again, even faster than before.   The camera cuts to the interior of the conservatory, the altar boys enter with the flags, the camera is stationed behind the corpse, one now realizes that the corpse is already lying in state at a high elevation, the bier with the corpse lying in state on it is already has a distinct relief, additionally more candles are burning next to the dead man, all of them are as tall as the candlesticks that the altar boys brought up here from the church, now there are eight candles on eight candlesticks.  The atmosphere in the conservatory no longer has an improvised quality, the theatrical atmosphere has been repressed, this is no longer a playhouse, but rather a hall for the lying in state of a corpse.  But the décor of the conservatory is completely unchanged, the theatrical décor is merely wrapped in gloom, in shadows.  In contrast, the scarcely still recognizable bier with the corpse lying in state on it, is clear, distinct, well to the foreground, and yet the observer never loses sight of the stage décor, but it has become unimportant.  One sees that the corpse is now already completely dressed for the funeral ceremony, its hands are folded over its abdomen et cetera, clearly visible are the ceremonial stripes on the legs of the trousers, the stag-horn buttons on the coat, et cetera, only the necktie and shoes are still missing.   Cut to an overhead view of the corpse in its heavy Styrian loden suit, one sees that it still has no shoes on, that its necktie is missing, the nakedness of its feet contrasts starkly with the fully clothed remainder of the body.  The altar boys approach the corpse, they are holding tightly on to the flagpoles, the dead man’s feet are slanted away from each other, the camera cuts to the altar boys’ faces, then back to the dead man’s feet, then to the abdomen of the dead man, then to the back of the dead man’s head.  One now notices the sister at the extreme right side of the frame, at the dead man’s feet, she has approached the corpse with a pair of black shoes, she places the (patent-leather) shoes between the dead man’s feet, takes the flagpoles from the altar boys, gives the flagpoles back to them, the altar boys insert the flagpoles into the iron rings mounted on the sides of the catafalque.  The altar boys exit the conservatory.  The sister says Fanny! Fanny!, she speaks rather than shouts Fanny!  Fanny!, on the one hand this means she is summoning Fanny, on the other hand it sounds as if she is saying Fanny!  Fanny! to herself.  Starting out from the same place as the sister a moment earlier, Fanny approaches the corpse, the two women now try to slip the corpse’s shoes on to its feet.  They work hastily, impatiently, they do not manage to get even one shoe on, for the first time one gets the impression that the sister is imbued with an awareness of her brother as a dead person, she silently cedes her share of the task of putting on the shoes to Fanny.  In the background all of a sudden the houseboy appears, the outline of his body, of his head with the workman’s sailcloth cap, is quite distinct, the houseboy walks up to the corpse, the two women fall back, the boy brutally and extremely quickly slips the shoes on to the corpse’s feet.  The corpse’s feet are now spread far apart.  This irritates the sister, she pushes the houseboy aside and tries to bring the dead man’s feet closer together, but she does not succeed.  The camera is centered on the corpse as seen from the front.  Now Fanny gives the sister a rubber band that she has taken from a box on the platform, the sister slips the rubber band over the dead man’s feet, which now cleave to each other, the tips of their toes are pointed directly at the ceiling.  The sister pulls the hems of the trouser legs down far enough to conceal the rubber band.  She steps back, the houseboy and Fanny step back.  The entire corpse is framed in isolation for four seconds, five seconds.  Suddenly the sister says: The necktie!  The necktie!  From the same pocket of her cardigan in which she formerly kept the bunch of keys, she extracts a black necktie and ties it around the corpse’s neck.  The houseboy is obliged to hold up the corpse’s head, Fanny unfolds the collar all the way up, the sister ties the tie around the collar, quickly.  Once the tie has been tied, the collar folded back down, the corpse fully and properly attired, the sister takes a step back from the catafalque to eye it over critically.  Fanny and the houseboy also take a step back.  The camera shows the three of them from behind, one sees only the candles, not the corpse.  This shot lasts four, five seconds, then the sister takes another step back, suddenly she tries to shove the entire catafalque about a half-meter back, closer to the center of the platform, which she naturally does not manage to do on her own, but the three of them together manage to shove the catafalque about a half-meter back into the platform, the attempt occasions a terrible amount of noise.  Now all three of them move the candles next to the catafalque about as far back as they have shoved the catafalque.  The sister stands up straight, remains standing, transfixed, the girl and the houseboy are standing beside her, equally transfixed.  The sister says: dead! and again, after two seconds, in the same cadence: dead!  Then, suddenly, galvanizing Fanny: the pillows!  The pillows!  Fanny is appalled by her own absent-mindedness, as one suddenly and clearly sees that the corpse’s head is lying directly on the velvet covering of the catafalque, with not a single pillow in between, one sees that Fanny was long ago assigned the task of bringing pillows but has not brought any pillows, Fanny turns around and runs out of the conservatory, the boy and the sister remain standing, the sister says: pillows!  Pillows! and then says: the blocks of wood!  The blocks of wood! and orders the houseboy thus: the blocks of wood must be placed underneath, the blocks of wood must be placed underneath! and the boy picks up two blocks of wood from the platform and first places one of them under the right side of the head of the catafalque, so that the right side of the head of the catafalque is at least fifteen centimeters higher than the left and then places the other block under the left side so that the right and left sides of the head of the catafalque are level with each other.  The boy stations himself behind the sister.  The sister says: the pillows!  The pillows!  Enter Fanny with an enormous paper pillow, the paper pillow is so huge that it juts out beyond the edge of the catafalque, the sister has still not noticed Fanny’s entrance, once again, two times in immediate succession, she says: pillows!  Pillows!, just as she is thinking: the corpse must lie higher and she says: higher! higher!  Fanny bumps into the sister from behind the with the pillow, the sister steps aside, the boy steps aside, the sister and the boy raise the corpse’s head high so that Fanny will be able to thrust the pillow under the head, the sister indicates to Fanny that she should thrust the pillow all the way under the corpse’s head, one observes that she detests asymmetry.  Once the corpse’s head is precisely positioned on the pillow, everybody takes a step back, even the boy takes a step back, they station themselves at the foot of the catafalque and remain in this position for two, three seconds, after which they stand at their full heights gazing at the corpse, the boy with his mouth agape, suddenly from below the march music from the Fairview Inn can be heard striking up and continuing for four seconds, then the march music ceases.  Now one can clearly see that the corpse is lying on a black velvet cloth, to insure that the corpse does not slide off, at the foot of the catafalque the sister shoves a piece of wooden molding under the dead man’s feet, but the dead man does not touch{?} the piece of molding, the boy gave the sister the piece of molding, which was lying on the platform.  Suddenly the march music strikes up again, continues for three seconds, very loudly.  The march music ceases.   Next a view of the grounds, along with the front of the house, from the conservatory.  Three tripods on the grounds, without land-surveyors, delineate an isosceles triangle, under one of the tripods (near the conservatory) are seen maps, papers, books, et cetera, strong onset of the sound of a jet airliner headed towards Wolfsegg from the east.  The Spaniard’s open window is pulled shut.  At the fence of the grounds to the right of the conservatory, roughly halfway between the conservatory and the right side of the castle wall the land-surveyor sits on a three-legged land-surveyor’s chair, tracking the sound of the airliner, the land-surveyor looks up at the sky, the camera shows the land-surveyor, the sound of the airliner breaks off, the land-surveyor stands up and goes to the tripod with the maps and papers, selects a map, briefly studies it, tosses it aside and then peers through the scope in the direction in which the airliner seemingly has flown, finally he centers his scope on the front of the castle.  The Spaniard personally re-opens his window.  A brief outburst of the quartet music behind the Italian’s window, cessation of the quartet music.  Silence.  The camera shows the front of the house without the land-surveyor, suddenly cuts to a view of the conservatory from the front of the house, from the conservatory the sister and Fanny are emerging with the houseboy, upon drawing level with the land-surveyor, the sister salutes the land-surveyor with a bow, but the three of them keep walking and enter the castle through the front door, without the land-surveyor’s taking any notice of them, the land-surveyor looks through his scope at the now-closed and locked front door, the sister emerges from the front door with a second paper pillow that is exactly as big as the first one, the one that she has already placed under the dead man’s head, and walks with it to the conservatory, the land-surveyor watches her until she has passed him, then the land-surveyor looks through his scope at the Italian until the quartet music (String Quartet No. 2) breaks off and the Italian, who has been standing at his window, steps away from his window in order, as the camera now shows, to start playing a new record.  The Third Quartet begins playing, the Italian goes to the window, the camera shows him from behind, standing at the window.  The land-surveyor, who is being observed by the Italian, pivots his scope on to the Spaniard’s window, the Spaniard is stocky, brawny, pedantic, black-haired, well groomed, he is cleaning his teeth with a toothpick at the window, he is not wearing a jacket, his suspenders are drawn tight over his shoulders, it is evident that lunch has already taken place.  He gazes into a pocket-mirror, he has not noticed the land-surveyor, in contrast to the Italian, who has noticed the land-surveyor on the grounds, the Spaniard has pretty much not yet noticed the land-surveyor.  The land-surveyor’s scope has taken over the camera’s function.  Leaning out the window, the Spaniard inspects his teeth in the mirror.  Suddenly the quartet music stops, the Spaniard looks over in alarm at the Italian’s window.  The quartet music recommences, the Spaniard resumes inspecting his teeth.  He unbuttons his shirt, gropes with his right hand under the shirt towards the spot beneath which the liver lies, withdraws his hand and rebuttons his shirt.  Now a view, through the land-surveyor’s scope, of the roof of the castle, on which is standing a tripod that is pointed at the scope on the grounds.  Three seconds pass.  Suddenly from the interior of the house one hears somebody calling loudly: Gianni!  A second time: Gianni!  Whereupon the Italian (the camera is in his room) calls out: all right!  I’m coming!  I’m coming, Max!  The camera is back on the grounds and centered on the Italian’s window.  The Italian shuts his window, the quartet music ceases.  The Spaniard at his window pauses in his inspection of his teeth, as though listening out for something.  The front door of the castle opens, in the doorway is standing the SON (Max), the camera now shows the land-surveyor on the grounds, he bows towards the front door as the son appears.  The son is wearing an English suit of Harris tweed (with plus-fours), and is bareheaded, he steps outside, turns around, and shouts back into the open doorway: Gianni!  Gianni!  Then he takes about four or five steps towards the land-surveyor, turns around and looks up at the roof of the castle, at the tripod stationed there, turns back around and walks a bit farther towards the land-surveyor, he is slim, his deportment is elegant, he looks at the door, the Italian emerges in a very elegant, fashionable Italian suit, one that is appropriate for this time of year, he is likewise bareheaded.  Dress-handkerchief in his breast pocket, cuffless trousers, et cetera, the Italian says to the son: Have you been waiting long?  The son: no, not long.  The Italian begins making towards the conservatory, but the son signals to him to approach the land-surveyor, the son speaks impeccable standard German with a slight Austrian accent, the Italian is a Florentine, as one senses from the incredible effortlessness of his deportment, he is more intellectual than the son, the epitome of the modern Italian intellectual hailing from a moneyed family, both of them are educated men and conscious of being so, they are well-bred, well-read, well-traveled, and fluent in the most important foreign languages.  The son introduces the Italian to the land-surveyor, he says: Gianni Selvani, the Italian.  The land-surveyor (in a long Hubertus coat) pronounces his own name unintelligibly.  The son to the Italian: the whole place has been being surveyed for years.  Tripods everywhere, wherever you look, there are tripods.  But it doesn’t bother me.  Not me, but it did bother my father.  He detested the land-surveyors.  I’m not bothered by any of it.  Where are we going?  Into the woods?   Si, si, into the woods, says the Italian.  The two of them move away from the land-surveyor and towards the gate of the grounds, the land-surveyor resumes working, centers his scope on the tripod on the roof, then on the two men, the Italian, the son, who are walking through the gateway of the grounds.  The scope pivots over to the inn-complex, from whose central gate an OLD LADY leaning on a walking-stick emerges, slowly, laboriously, but for all that with a ladylike gait, she walks from the inn-complex to the grounds, her dress is dark, she is white-haired, fat, with a black cape hanging from her shoulders, a lorgnette on a long string, et cetera.  She is slowly approaching the land-surveyor, who is observing the tripod on the roof.  The camera then centers on the Spaniard’s window, the old lady draws to a halt and raises her stick and calls up to the Spaniard’s window: Señor Legoya!  A second time, loudly: Señor Legoya!  Her voice is affected, very loud, so that the Spaniard cannot help hearing her, whereas in reality he cannot hear her at all.  The Spaniard opens his window, looks out.  The old lady: Señor Legoya!  Are you ready?  The Spaniard bows only perfunctorily from the window: at the same time his bow signifies: I’ll be there immediately, in just a moment, he already has his jacket on, he hastily closes the window, and as he does so the old lady turns around and observes the land-surveyor, who is observing the inn-complex.  This scene is one of extreme calm and lasts until the Spaniard emerges from the front door, secures the front door and approaches the lady and arm in arm with the lady passes by the land-surveyor without being taken notice of by the land-surveyor, who is intensely observing the inn-complex.  The camera remains centered on the two of them until it is clear that they are entering the inn-complex and continuing on into the landscape behind the inn-complex, but none of this is shown.  The two of them walk so naturally slowly that it is impossible to continue following them, and so there is a montage sequence of stationary images that very quickly show how slowly the two of them, the Spaniard and the lady, are walking to the inn.  During this scene, which is filmed looking down {?} from the Fairview Inn, we hear the march music, twice it breaks off, then strikes up again, then breaks off again.  The kitchen: the cook and Fanny, in the background the girls (Nos. 1, 2, and 3) busy washing and drying dishes, the cook is brewing coffee, the boy is sitting at the table and draining a glass of cider, he stands up, puts on his cap, which he has laid on the table, and suddenly sticks his tongue out at the cook, he sticks his tongue out as far as possible, while thrusting his trunk forward as lewdly as possible towards the cook.  The cook reacts by not moving a muscle, the girls by laughing in the background, at first they do not dare to laugh, but then they suddenly burst into laughter.  The boy leaves the kitchen, the cook looks at the clock.  One gets the impression that several dozen lunches were cooked, there are hundreds of dirty plates et cetera lying about, they look as though they have come straight back from the dining room.  One gets the impression, although none of this is made explicit, from the frequent opening and shutting of doors that is shown, that on both the first and second stories there are people entering and exiting, doors opening and shutting, people walking through the passageways, that there are already quite a number of guests for the funeral in the house, such that there is more and more work to do in the kitchen, and quite a lot more now, after lunch, than after breakfast, the increase in the number of people in the castle may be inferred from the increase in the amount of crockery in the kitchen.  Suddenly the door of the kitchen opens and a MAN IN BLACK is standing in the doorway, tall, thin, almost as tall as the doorway itself, without saying a word the cook gives him a cup of coffee and the man disappears, immediately after which a SECOND MAN in a dark gray suit appears, the cook gives him a cup of coffee and the man disappears, the cups in question are demitasses on small saucers and with a coffee-spoon, a third man enters the kitchen, the cook gives him a small plate with a banana and a small paring-knife on it, the man disappears, whereupon a seventeen-year-old GIRL enters, she is elegant, has long, shoulder-length hair, the cook gives her a glass of sherry, each time the cook acts as though she knows what to give the person, whether coffee or fruit or sherry et cetera, there is a knock at the door, an OLD MAN WHO LOOKS LIKE TOSCANINI is standing in the doorway, the cook says something to the girls, one of them goes to the sideboard and cuts off two slices of white bread with a white-bread knife, sets the white bread on a plate with a knife and gives the plate to the old man, who bows, he now looks even more like Toscanini, he vanishes, suddenly TWO LITTLE (four-to-six-year-old) GIRLS in sailors’ outfits are in the kitchen, the cook gives them a tray with a large first-aid kit box on it, next to the box is a broad, sturdy bottle with a label reading NEOTIZIDE, then the cook says: be careful! to the children while raising her index finger and bowing low to them, the girls are standing shoulder to shoulder, they are standing shoulder to shoulder, then shoulder to shoulder like two dolls they exit the kitchen with the tray, in the background at the window Girls 1, 2, and 3 laugh at the two little girls leaving the room with the tray, the cook looks at the clock and says: happast two!  and pours the coffee from a large metal pot into a small white porcelain pot on a tray for a single person, on the tray is a large cloth napkin with the name VERA embroidered on it.  A girl (No. 1) picks up the tray, the cook looks at the clock and says: happast two!, Girl No. 1 exits the kitchen with the tray, the door closes with a crash, the cook stares furiously at the clock, Girls 2 and 3 are laughing in the background.  Now the door opens and the old man who looks like Toscanini enters, he draws to a halt in the doorway and says: a spoon please! and the cook hands him a small espresso spoon.  Thank you! says the man who looks like Toscanini, as he is saying thank you the viewer realizes that he is Italian.  He disappears.  The camera now shows the drawing-room, a long table from which the remains of lunch have not been entirely cleared away, at its head sits the sister, transfixed, fully erect, alone.  Behind her the door opens, Girl No. 1 enters with the tray without causing the sister to turn around, she takes absolutely no notice of the girl, the girl sets the tray down in front of the sister, the sister pours herself some coffee, the girl remains standing behind the sister, the sister stirs the coffee with a small silver espresso spoon while saying as if to herself but at the same as if giving an order to the girl standing behind her: he must lie higher!  Much higher!  Turns around to face the girl and says: one more pillow!  One more pillow!  Immediately!  The girl exits the room, the sister stirs her coffee and says to herself, once the girl has left: higher!  He must lie higher!  He must lie extremely high!  Then she drains the coffee in a single gulp, leaves everything on the table as it is, the whole lunch-dirtied table with its dozens of crumpled napkins et cetera, is shown, and exits the room.  The camera is centered for four or five seconds on the closed door.  The door opens, the houseboy enters.  From his dirty work clothes, completely grime-bespattered boots, smudge-stained face, one can plainly see that he pretty much has no business being here in the dining room, he walks up to the table, and after making sure that nobody is watching him and that hence he is alone, he pours himself a cup of coffee, drains the cup in one gulp and disappears through the door.  The boy’s reactions are lighting-fast, jerky, furtive.  The camera lingers for two seconds on the securely shut door.  Next the camera is stationed at the gate of the grounds.  The MAYOR enters the grounds, walks towards the front door, at the conservatory several gentlemen in black can be seen standing together and conversing, they pay no attention to the mayor, who before continuing to the front door walks up to the land-surveyor (who is standing at his tripod, at the right side of the frame).  Now there are only two tripods on the grounds, the tripod on the roof is visible.  The mayor walks up to the land-surveyor and greets him with a handshake and the two of them cast their eyes around the surrounding land, and also at the tripod on the roof, all the while they are nodding at each other in a tacitly conspiratorial manner.  The nod that accompanies their viewing of the tripod on the roof signifies: it’s good that there is even a tripod on the roof.  The mayor and the land-surveyor have known each other for many years, one sees how they greet each other like old school friends, talk like people glad to see each other again.  The mayor is dressed in black and has in his hand a black hat, a kind of low-rise top hat.  The land-surveyor says to the mayor, while emphasizing his words with hand gestures, that the sister, whom the mayor obviously is looking for, is in the conservatory, not in the castle, but the viewer cannot make out a word of what the land-surveyor is saying, one can hear pretty much nothing, or rather only something that is completely unintelligible, but very loud, artificially loud.  The land-surveyor points at the tripod on the roof.  The land-surveyor and the mayor nod conspiratorially at the tripod.  All the windows on the front of the castle are shut, but the door of the drawing-room (the door of the dining room on the first floor) is open.  In this doorway the sister appears, the mayor looks up, salutes her with a bow, the sister raises her hand as if she is planning to come down to him immediately, she turns around goes into the drawing-room, the mayor is nonplussed, because the land-surveyor just gave him to understand that the sister was in the conservatory, not the castle, the two men laugh very briefly, but immediately stifle their laughter, the mayor goes to the front door, no sooner has he arrived there, than the sister (having stepped out from within) is also at the front door.  The two of them walk to the conservatory.  The camera is stationed at the head of the catafalque.  The mayor and the sister enter the conservatory.  The corpse is now lying fully in state in the manner stipulated by the dead man’s sister.  The mayor and the sister walk all the way up to the corpse and remain standing before the corpse.  They stand beside the corpse only very briefly, the mayor with his head bowed, his hat held in front with both hands, et cetera, posed in mourning, the sister seemingly in enormous satisfaction at the perfect correspondence of the lying-in-state with her idea of it, her head held high.  The funeral march can be heard striking up down at the Fairview Inn.  The music breaks off after four seconds.  The camera is stationed at the front door.  The mayor is at the conservatory, being taken leave of by the sister, beside the conservatory is a large group of gentlemen who are deep in conversation, the mayor walks up to the gate of the grounds, the sister walks back to the front door, each of the gentlemen in the group turns around to face first the departing sister then the departing mayor, then they all turn back around at the same time.  The land-surveyor picks up the only tripod on the grounds, folds it up and carries it into the woods at the right side of the frame, vanishes.   The tripod on the roof of the castle with the land-surveyor, who is looking at the group of gentlemen at the conservatory through his scope, the group has increased in size, between the conservatory and the inn-complex there are now about a dozen cars.  Enter a chauffeur-driven Bentley through the gate of the grounds, an Englishman is in the back seat, the Bentley moves very slowly towards the front door of the castle, arrives at the front door.  In the front doorway the sister has drawn to a halt, she has turned around, is watching the approaching Bentley, makes a motion suggesting that she is trying to examine her clothing with her hands, stands up straight and tall, as if she has actually been waiting in the doorway for the Englishman for some time.  The car has an English license plate.  The chauffeur gets out of the car, opens the back door, a thin, dark-haired fifty-year-old man of average stature gets out and immediately walks up to the sister, the two of them embrace briefly but meaningfully, tarry for a moment in this attitude and step inside.  The chauffeur follows them with two fairly large but fairly light pieces of luggage, immediately steps back out through the front door without the luggage, takes his seat inside the car, drives the car just past the conservatory and the group of gentlemen, who take no notice of him, towards the inn-complex, and parks alongside the at least fifteen other cars that are already parked there (at the conservatory).   From the large number of cars that are now suddenly visible between the conservatory and the inn-complex one gets the impression that a great many guests for the funeral have already arrived.  That the scene that has just now taken place, the arrival of a car, the arrival of some guests for the funeral, has been repeated dozens of times over the course of the past two hours.  Now the butcher’s helper walks with a rack filled to capacity through the gate of the grounds, the group of gentlemen briefly observes him, reassembles, the butcher’s helper walks up to the front door of the castle, the front door is open, the butcher’s helper enters the castle.  The camera, which has been showing the butcher’s helper from behind, cuts immediately to the baker’s helper, who is walking with a white bread-bag slung over his back to the front door, again the group of gentlemen at the conservatory turns round to face the baker’s helper, turns back around, immediately afterwards the postman with a new batch of sympathy mail, again a rucksack, valise, stack of letters, walks into the grounds and up to the front door and enters the castle.  Four or five seconds of the open front doorway as a black hole, then the following people emerge: the butcher’s helper, the baker’s helper, the postman, finally six or seven laborers in boiler suits with work tool-bags slung over their shoulders, the group of gentlemen gazes after them as they walk through the gate of the grounds.  Immediately afterwards the camera is again centered on the front doorway of the castle, from which the altar boys, laughing all the while, rush out and continue rushing through the park, the group of men gazes disapprovingly at them, the altar boys pass through the gate of the grounds, the two altar boys had run out of the doorway with unpeeled and half-eaten bananas in their hands, all the while half screaming, half laughing.  The camera now follows the two of them from behind, as they run down the street leading to the Fairview Inn.  The assembly-room at the Fairview Inn.  All instruments are on the floor, half-empty beer-glasses the chairs, a single wind-player plays a section of the march, he starts playing, stops playing, starts playing, stops playing.  A second wind-player enters, sits down, takes a deep gulp from a beer-glass.  Then the two of them play together for five seconds, each of them is practicing his own part on his own, they stop playing.  The conductor enters.  The entire wind band enters behind the conductor.  The camera shows the door of the conservatory from the point of view of the head of the catafalque, meanwhile the band has begun playing the march, more calmly and accurately than ever before, eight candles on eight sticks are now burning.  The camera from the point of view of the entrance of the conservatory is centered directly on the corpse, and, in the background, on the décor, which is hazy, almost completely obscured, now the camera is again at the head of the catafalque and centered on the sister, to her right is the gentleman from the Bentley, behind them both are the gentlemen who earlier were conferring in front of the conservatory, everyone is motionless, from the Fairview Inn the march is heard playing quite calmly, suddenly a gunshot is fired, it elicits absolutely no reaction from anyone.  For eight seconds the camera is centered on the mourning party, the march stops playing.  The camera is centered on the front door of the castle, in front of the front door is parked a Jaguar of the latest make, TWO GENTLEMEN, in long-waisted jackets of beige sailcloth, have gotten out of the car, a chauffeur gets immediately back into the car, starts the engine, drives the car past the conservatory to the inn-complex and parks it next to the Bentley.  The gentlemen from the Jaguar stand in the front doorway of the castle and gaze towards the conservatory and at the group of gentlemen.  The camera shows the entire foyer leading up to outside, the gentlemen in the doorway, in the distance the grounds, all the way up to the conservatory and what is more, clearly recognizable, the sister and the gentleman from the Bentley, the gentlemen from the Jaguar walk in as far as the staircase (the camera is stationed behind the staircase and pointed at the doorway) and ascend the stairs, suddenly from upstairs one hears  a murmur of dozens of people,  basically like an unintelligible conversation among hundreds of people, like at a cocktail party, this murmur vehemently commences just as soon as the two gentlemen from the Jaguar have vanished upstairs, but the camera remains pointed at the doorway, with its focal point being the group of gentlemen outside, who all of a sudden move very quickly towards the doorway, everyone standing on the grounds does so, and one now gets the impression that there are hundreds of people in dark clothes approaching the doorway, they are now more clearly visible than ever before: there are no other sounds, apart, on the one hand, from the murmur from the second storey, and , on the other, from the suddenly crescendoing conversation of the people from outside coming closer to the doorway, the ever faster-moving, and eventually hasty, approachers of the doorway, the sister heading them up, are the first, the sister is the first of these, at the doorway, it sounds as if someone is tumbling headlong down the stairs, and in fact one does suddenly see the man who looks like Toscanini tumbling down the stairs and falling flat in front of the camera, the sister, followed by the group of people, makes straight for the figure lying on the floor, the sister lifts the head of the man who looks like Toscanini, peers into the surrounding crowd of inquisitive faces (the camera is shooting from the floor), she shouts: Fanny! Fanny!  Girl No. 1 comes, the group lets her through, the sister says: For God’s sake!  into the silence that suddenly follows she suddenly says: For God’s sake! and then, after about three seconds of silence adds: his room, he must be taken to his room!  The crowd steps back, the sister and Girl No. 1 carry the man who looks like Toscanini up the stairs, from upstairs a very loud murmur suddenly descends like a wall, the camera is centered on the crowd of people at the foot of the staircase, who are looking up, seeing what there is to see: a dying old man.  But the camera does not show this.  The camera remains centered on the foot of the staircase, the crowd of people steps back and now surges suddenly as before it did into the house, through the front doorway out into the grounds and there disperses, the people scatter very quickly towards the conservatory and towards the inn-complex and towards the gate of the grounds, walking across the lawn as though there were no gravel path to walk on.  The camera cuts back to the spot where the old man who looks like Toscanini was lying, one fancies that one can see a pool of blood, or at least the outline of a pool of blood, on the spot, but in reality one sees nothing.  The camera is then stationed at the doorway, everything outside is completely devoid of people, the grounds are devoid of people, from the left side to the right side of the frame the land-surveyor is very quickly carrying a tripod, he runs past as he carries it.  TWO GENTLEMEN in the doorway, who have arrived from the left side of the frame, are looking up towards the Italian’s window, the camera is stationed at the foot of the staircase.  One of the men says, while looking up at the Italian’s window: It’s good that he’s gone away.  The other: It’s scandalous!  All night long and all morning long he played that unbearable music!  For years this man has been playing those records.  Wherever he goes he brings that unbearable music with him and drives everybody around him crazy.  Whereupon his interlocutor says: A fool!  Filthy rich and a fool.  The one gentleman: What is the Italian’s actual age?  The other gentleman: forty.  The one: He owns half of Tuscany.  The other: And he’s actually an electrical engineer.  You heard me, an electrical engineer.  His mother died in a burning theater in Padua during a performance of Aida.  He’s a huge fan of Goethe, of German literature in general.  And then suddenly there was nothing more but Béla Bartók.  Béla Bartók.  Nothing but Béla Bartók. Does that make any sense to you?  Next the camera is looking up from the foot of the staircase, on the fourth or fifth step the two gentlemen are standing, the scene suggests that they cannot go upstairs, from which one hears the murmur of the crowd, and so they are conversing at the foot of the stairs.  The one gentleman: These people.  All these people at the funeral.  Somebody dies and all of a sudden you see all these people…this horrible music.  You know that the Italian owns the three largest farms in Tuscany, to say nothing of the quarries at Carrara.  To say absolutely nothing of the quarries at Carrara.  Breweries.  Cementworks.  Rubber factories, he says.  He hates flying.  It’s unbelievable, fourteen hours on the train.  You know what that’s like, of course, you’re tired and you can’t get to sleep, you hear everything, nothing escapes you, at every station you hear everything.  Mestre, Tarvisio, Böckstein, Badgastein, Salzburg, Attnang-Puchheim.  Horrible.  He also hates long car trips…That kind of music gets on my nerves.  When you hear it constantly, when you aren’t forced to hear it and have to hear that music constantly.  But thank God the funeral is tomorrow and then it’ll all be over.  The scene is quite thick with smoke, the smoke is so thick that is pouring down from upstairs.  This smoke, says the one gentleman.  The other gentleman coughs, then says: the Spaniard is a gun freak.  The one guy is a music freak, the other’s a gun freak.  The one gentleman says: Crazy.  Then: You can consider yourself lucky that you haven’t got a room next to that madman’s room.  But there’s no sense in complaining about it.  The best you can do is to air out the room only briefly and keep the window shut.  Are you staying here in the house or are you staying down in the village?  Answer: I’m staying at the Fairview Inn.  The other gentleman: I’m staying there too.  The one: The first category are staying here, the second are staying at the Fairview Inn.  I belong absolutely to the second category.  The other: In any case, there is also a third category: they’re staying in the other inns.  The one: Is your room warm?  I’m freezing.  I constantly have to pace up and down the room to keep from freezing to death.  The other: it’s badly heated, too badly heated.  A very cold region.  It’s always windy here.  It’s always cold here.  When you suddenly pitch up in this cold, windy region, you freeze.  People go to funerals, which causes them to catch colds and fall ill and die and so forth.   The camera then centers on the doorway, the two of them in the doorway.  The one gentleman:  Do you believe it was suicide?  That he deliberately shot himself?  That’s what they’re saying, that he deliberately shot himself.  That it was no accident.  The other gentleman shrugs his shoulders.  The one: That’s what they’re saying, that he deliberately shot himself.  TWO LADIES (about forty years old each) enter the house, passing by the two gentlemen, who look on after them, and proceeding on to and no farther than the foot of the staircase.  The one lady: I don’t like it one bit, I absolutely don’t like it one bit.  The other lady: Then we went/’ll go to Rome via Toulon and from Rome back to Avignon.  The two of them briefly laugh.  The one: There was supposed to be a premiere today.  A comedy.  As always, a comedy.  A light entertainment.  Allegedly there wasn’t a single sign that anything would happen.  All of a sudden the shot came.  They say he watched the whole play and stepped out of the conservatory and shot himself on the grounds.  The other: No, in his room.  In the conservatory they only heard the shot.  They say he died immediately.  And he asked to be laid out in the conservatory.  Looks towards the conservatory?, but nobody sees her?, then: And no will.  No will, mind you, no will.  Natural succession by inheritance, mind you.  They ascend the staircase.  The camera then centers on the gentlemen in the doorway.  The one gentleman: Frankly speaking, I find funerals disgusting, sure, I understand the fascination, but I find funerals disgusting.  The two gentlemen suddenly approach the camera, ascend the staircase.  The camera is installed in the front doorway of the castle.  View of a Lancia, a young Italian MARRIED COUPLE get out, walk through the doorway while the car remains parked outside, the two of them ascend the staircase without saying a word.  Two TALL MEN IN BLACK enter the castle, they are wearing long coats gathered in at the waist, walk in as far as the staircase, stop.  The one man: Obviously.  The other man: What’s the name of the inn?  The one: The Fairview.  The two of them briefly laugh, ascend the staircase.  The camera is centered on and looking through the doorway, the Lancia is gone.  Fanny enters the castle through the doorway with a full laundry basket and passes by the camera en route to the kitchen, the houseboy, with the sailcloth cap on his head, follows her, he has three dead hens on a string in his hand.  Then the two undertakers enter the castle through the front door.  Each of them is carrying something, the one, circumspectly, a large white box, the other, a large bouquet of flowers with a top to bottom-spanning silk bow whose inscription is illegible, they glance towards the kitchen and then ascend the staircase.  Emerging from the kitchen, the houseboy walks past the camera and out the front doorway, once he is outside, he starts running.   The camera is filming the front doorway of the castle from the grounds.  The undertakers with box and bouquet are standing at the left side of the doorway.  The sister takes the lid off the box and looks inside, the camera does not show what is in the box, the box is shut back up by the undertaker who is carrying it, the sister shakes her head, as if by way of saying, no, I won’t have that in the box, she takes the bouquet from the two undertakers, the undertakers bow and walk towards the gate of the grounds, the camera, centered on them, with the majority of the funeral guests on the far right side of the frame, follows the two undertakers.  The camera is centered on the front doorway of the castle, the sister goes inside with the bouquet.  Two gentlemen are standing at the foot of the staircase.  The one gentleman says:  It’s incredible.  The other gentleman: You can hardly breathe.  They step outside through the front doorway.  From outside TWO OTHER GENTLEMEN enter, stop at the staircase.  The one gentleman says: Such a colossal loss.  The other gentleman: You’ve got to be on your guard.  Mind you, you’ve got to be on your guard.  They ascend the stairs.  The camera is looking through the doorway out into the grounds, which is now, from the conservatory to the point halfway between the conservatory and the camera, suddenly crammed with cars, the people are standing in front of the cars.  The locomotive whistles as the camera looking through the front doorway of the castle directly shows the people gathered in front of the cars.  Through the gate of the grounds at least five HUNTSMEN come and walk, amidst the cars, while being observed by those standing on the grounds, to the conservatory.  A voice says: the huntsmen!  But one does not see who has said this, it sounds as though somebody standing right next to the camera has said the hunstmen.  The camera is stationed at the head of the catafalque.  The huntsmen enter the conservatory.  As these huntsmen are entering the conservatory and taking up their positions, one hears the sound of the jet airliner flying over Wolfsegg from west to east.  Otherwise not a single sound is heard.  Absolute silence otherwise.  The huntsmen doff their hats, position themselves in front of the catafalque, remain in position until the sound of the airliner has fallen silent, and walk back outside the conservatory.  The camera shows the huntsmen as they emerge from the conservatory, their faces are in close-up.  The camera is centered on the gate of the grounds.  The Italian and the son are coming back into the grounds and towards the camera after their walk, one can hear them conversing, but one cannot understand a word of their conversation, finally one hears the sentence: The land-surveyors are surveying everything, everything is being surveyed by the land-surveyors, spoken by the son.  Then in the course of the conversation all of a sudden the names Mazzini, Serrati, Campanella, then the name Modigliani, as the name Modigliani is spoken (by the Italian), the people standing on the grounds turn towards the two men who have just entered them.  The son quite loudly says the word: opportunism.  The Italian says the words incalculable and catastrophe amid a stream of other words that are unintelligible, then he says the word catastrophe very slowly, pronouncing each syllable independently, the two men draw to a halt and look at the ground and the Italian says pensively: ca-tas-tro-phe.  The people on the grounds turn away from the two men.  The two men are now standing at the edge of the mass of cars that already fills more than half the grounds.  Now the huntsmen emerging from the conservatory are shown as they observe the son and new gentlemen thus in conversation with the Italian, they salute them, curtly bow, doff their hats, re-don their hats, the son returns their salutation, very curtly, the son and the Italian on the right, the huntsmen on the left, have exchanged salutations while walking from the conservatory and without stopping.  The Italian and son walk towards the front door, the huntsmen, approaching the camera, exit through the gate of the grounds.  From the inn-complex comes the old lady leaning on the walking stick with the Spaniard on her arm.  One hears the Spaniard uttering a phrase in Spanish, basically just sin novedad en el frente, but the sentence is unintelligible.  The lady draws to a halt and bursts into a loud peal of laughter, but then immediately stops laughing.  The two remain standing amid the mass of cars, the cars now fill the entire area between the inn-complex and the conservatory, half the grounds.  The Spaniard kisses the old lady’s hand.  One hears her say: Señor!, then the lady returns to the inn-complex, and the Spaniard joins the crowd of people on the grounds.  The camera presents an exterior view of the front doorway of the castle, through which the Italian and son are walking.  The Spaniard follows them in, but only when one can no longer see the figures who preceded him.  The camera remains centered on the front doorway, as the march from down at the Fairview Inn strikes up, the houseboy is standing in the doorway, continues standing in the doorway and picks his nose.  Now one hears a Bartók quartet (No. 3) playing very quietly through the Italian’s window, the window is opened, the music suddenly becomes loud, the march music and quartet music are playing at the same time very loudly, the camera centers on the people on the grounds, who are looking up at the Italian’s window.  The houseboy vanishes back into the castle.  The camera is stationed at the war memorial.  Almost the whole village square is filled with cars, amid the cars, from the statue of the Virgin Mary (up the hill sloping down towards Gaspoltshofen) a wooden cart with high wheels is being drawn by TWO MEN in work clothes (boiler suits, sailcloth caps on their heads), on the cart lies a stack of wreaths, lots of wreath-bows with inscriptions that are illegible, discernably so.  The cart is being pushed by the two men into the center of the village square.  The men lean against the cart by way of stopping it and taking a break.  Out of the buildings on the square come several very old SENILE WOMEN and MEN, as if from the old people’s home, they walk up to the cart and run their fingers over the wreaths and bows as one would over objects of inestimable value.  The men observe the old people.  This scene lasts at least twenty-five seconds.  The men resume pushing the cart, towards the war memorial, past the war memorial, at this moment a large truck that is laden with wreaths, laden with hundreds of wreaths, comes up the hill sloping down towards Gaspholtshofen, from behind the statue of the Virgin Mary and towards the war memorial, the truck traverses the entire village square, approaches and passes the camera, all at a fairly quick pace.  The camera is stationed at the top of the gate of the grounds, filming a deputation from the VETERANS’ ASSOCIATION who are carrying black flags and are on their way up to the castle, the deputation are in mufti, in their ordinary weekday clothes.  The camera centers on the land-surveyor on the roof, who then looks down through his scope at the grounds, which are now well over halfway filled with cars, with a large number, at any rate at least eighty, men and women in black standing among them.  Through the land-surveyor’s scope, which is horizontally oriented so as to take in several tripods in the landscape, tripods through whose scopes other land-surveyors are looking at the castle, the camera shows the land-surveyor at the castle as he describes a complete horizontal circle with the scope.  One gets the impression that the landscape is permeated by land-surveyors at work.  From the woods behind the inn-complex emerge the altar boys with a black CANOPY on which is embroidered a nine-pointed silver crown, they walk with the CANOPY as if in a procession, as if in a Corpus Christi procession, the camera is looking out from the woods at the two boys in front of the inn-complex (the back-side of the inn-complex).  A gunshot is fired, but the two altar boys do not react to it.  As if they have not heard the shot.  Fifteen or twenty paces in front of the inn-complex they encounter the old lady leaning on the walking-stick, just after the altar boys have passed her, the old lady turns towards them and then goes into the woods.  The camera is stationed at the head of the catafalque.  The sister is alone with her dead brother.  Standing fully erect, she is observing the corpse.  At the catafalque there are now stationed fourteen candles, seven on the right side, seven on the left, all of them are lit.  The sister has propped her hands up on the foot of the catafalque.  Fanny enters the conservatory with the cushion for displaying medals, the sister places in front of the catafalque a small table that has been standing next to the platform and lays the cushion on it.  Now the sister pulls from her cardigan a white embroidered pocket handkerchief and sticks it into the breast pocket of the dead man’s Styrian suit.  She immediately sees that the pocket handkerchief does not look right thrust into the breast pocket of the Styrian suit like that, and she pulls the pocket handkerchief back out.  Suddenly she turns around and exits the conservatory, Fanny follows her.  The camera is now looking out from the front doorway of the castle and showing the sister approaching the front doorway, behind her an immense crowd of people, now much closer to the castle than before, the sister passes quickly through the doorway.  The camera is looking out from the front doorway at an approaching chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, an ENGLISH MARRIED COUPLE, elegantly but casually dressed, get out, from within the doorway the sister approaches the new arrivals, she embraces them, the lady has brought with her a large bouquet, which the chauffeur has been holding, now the chauffeur gives the lady the bouquet, the lady gives the bouquet to the sister, there is a second round of embracing, one cannot understand what is being said, one knows that it consists of a couple of words in English, but one does not know what these words are, now the camera is looking from the grounds at the front doorway of the castle, which is now suddenly brushed against by a broad swath of black velvet.  From the balcony a swath of black velvet at least a meter wide now hangs down over the front doorway.  The new arrivals are standing in the doorway as the Rolls Royce drives away, it circles back past the conservatory, past the inn-complex, and through the gate of the grounds, on the other side of which are parked a good two-dozen cars, the chauffeur parks the car at the edge of this group of cars in front of the woods.  Some YOUNG BOYS are gaping in astonishment at the Rolls Royce, but they do not dare to approach it.  The chauffeur gets out.  The camera is centered on the black velvet-swathed front doorway.  The English married couple and the sister enter the castle.  The camera is centered on the boys behind the inn-complex, who now venture to approach the Rolls Royce; from the sty next to the Rolls Royce the grunting of pigs can be heard, it is an upsurge of noise produced by several pigs.  The camera is stationed between the kitchen and the foot of the staircase and pointed at the front doorway.  The English married couple enter the foyer with the sister.  The houseboy emerges from the kitchen, passes by them with an empty meat rack.[19]  The sister and the English married couple converse at the foot of the staircase, but one cannot understand a word of their conversation, but suddenly one can make out a single phrase uttered by the young wife: Poor Georg!  The sister leads the two of them up the stairs.  Now the camera is looking from the ground floor up at the landing between the first and second floors, at which the sister and the married couple have halted and are conversing, the wife says: Poor Georg!  Then the camera is centered on the guests for the funeral who are standing on the grounds, who are collectively gazing at the castle.  Then the camera cuts from the guests for the funeral standing on the grounds to the front of the castle and the Italian’s open window out of which the quartet music suddenly begins playing very loudly.  The camera is then stationed behind the guests for the funeral and pointed at the front of the castle, the guests for the funeral are like an impenetrable wall in front of the front of the castle.  The Spaniard’s window is opened, then shut.  The camera is centered on the front doorway of the castle, from which the altar boys emerge with the black CANOPY, they then turn right and walk past the guests for the funeral and to the conservatory, the guests for the funeral follow the altar boys with their eyes.  The scene changes to the kitchen: the cook is standing at the stove, stirring a large, steaming cauldron.  A huge cold supper stands ready to be eaten, large trays with thousands of sandwiches et cetera, pieces of fruit et cetera.   Cold meats on silver trays, heaps of silver spoons.  The cook looks at the clock, says: happast four.  Repeats: happast four.  The houseboy is sitting at the table, observing the cook as she stirs the pot, in the background, at the window, are Girls 1, 2, and 3.  The door leading to the passageway opens, several guests for the funeral, as many as possible, are standing in the doorway, wanting to come into the kitchen, one hears several times the word coffee being spoken, Spanish, Italian, French, English being spoken pell-mell, one sees the faces of the people trying to force themselves into the room, their clothes, shoes, hair, elbows, arms et cetera, on the one hand all these people are trying to force their way into the kitchen, on the other hand they are simply standing in the doorway, one is merely under the impression that they are trying to force themselves in, in reality they are standing in the doorway as if paralyzed, and holding their coffee cups out.  The cook approaches the doorway with a tray holding nothing but small coffee cups and spoons, distributes them among the people standing in the doorway.  She pushes the people out into the passageway, shuts the door.  Looks at the clock: happast four, she says.  To the houseboy: happast four.  In the background the girls are cutting bread with the bread-cutting machine, dressing salad, et cetera.  From the passageway a loud murmuring is suddenly heard.  From out there comes a sudden outburst of laughter, the cook goes to the door, opens the door, looks out, shuts the door.  The houseboy suddenly pulls a dead hare that he has set down under his chair up through his legs, jumps up and waves the dead hare under the cook’s nose and throws the dead hare into a large pot on the stove.  The cook says to him: stupid idjit!  The houseboy sits back down at the table, the girls giggle in the background, the houseboy stretches his legs all the way out, lolls his upper body about on the table-top, with a fork the cook takes from a pot a piece of meat and sets it on a plate, adds a piece of bread, sets the plate down on the table next to the boy.  The boy begins to eat, hurriedly, pouncing on the meat, tearing into it.  The butcher’s helper enters, he has a rack full of meat, he turns it upside-down over the large cutting board next to the stove, the pieces of meat pile up on the cutting board.  The cook looks at the clock: happast four, she says.  The butcher’s helper exits the kitchen, the girls observe him as he exits.  Suddenly the Italian is standing in the doorway leading to the passageway, he says caffé?  Repeats: caffé, please!  The cook says: yes, Mr Salvani, pours the Italian some coffee into a cup that the Italian has brought with him.  While the cook is pouring him his coffee the Italian observes the boy, who is observing the girls standing at the window.  The cook has finished pouring him his coffee, she glances brusquely at the boy, and at the same time she is looking thus at the boy, she says to the Italian: What a blockhead, what a pig.  Right, thank you, says the Italian.  He looks at the clock, before he leaves he says: ’alf-past four.  He tastes his coffee while looking at the boy.  Exits.  Through the still-open kitchen doorway, through which the Italian has just exited, an impenetrable crowd of people is shown, the entire passageway is filled with people.  One gets the impression that everybody is saying everything pell-mell, one cannot understand a single word.  Through the still-open kitchen door the camera gives a view cleaving close to the ceiling, a view over the heads of people and leading all the way to the front doorway of the castle.  The view suggests that the castle is filled to the point of asphyxiation.  This shot lasts at least six seconds.  The camera moves forward and outside through the front doorway, as though fleeing from being suffocated by the people and the low ceiling of the passageway.  The camera continues filming after it has passed through the doorway, the view passes over numerous people and cars and finally settles on the inn-complex.  It is already dusk, everything is growing indistinct, and at the same time unreal-seeming.  Several rapidly successive shots of the multitude of cars.  Now a shot looking from the gate of the grounds past the conservatory and towards the mountains in the distance.  A shot of the front section of the Fairview Inn with its bay windows, the words THE FAIRVIEW INN on the sign are now very distinctly legible in the twilight.  March-music can be heard from within the brightly illuminated inn, it is of course still day, but inside the inn the lights are already on.  The camera suddenly moves back with the lightning speed.  A view of the front of the old people’s home.  Cheaply made lowered blinds and drawn curtains.  Behind the drawn curtains are heads, silhouettes of heads, half shapes, the silhouettes of the inmates of the old people’s home.  The entrance to the parsonage.  The entrance to the bakery.  The entrance to the butcher’s shop.  Several houses are shown one after the other, on each and every house is posted the same large death-notice with the same illegible text.  A view of the village square from the war memorial.  A view of the village square from the statue of the Virgin Mary.  The war memorial is suddenly draped in black, a black cloth has been thrown over it.  The statue of the Virgin Mary is shown with a black cloth thrown over it.  A shot looking uphill from the war memorial to the churchyard.  The churchyard gate.  Gravestones.  Over the churchyard wall the land-surveyor leaps with a tripod under his arm, the camera follows him until he has vanished behind the wall.  Gravestones.  A large tomb.  Now images of several gravestones are shown in quick succession like photographs, two dozen of them very quickly.   Suddenly one sees the open, broadly and deeply dug grave, around and into which some fourteen or fifteen people are standing and looking.  The camera is in the grave.  At the very edge of the grave is the old lady with the Spaniard, opposite her is the man who looks like Toscanini.  The English married couple.  All are shown from below, they look as if they are standing high above on a hill, the people are thereby ? shown very largely ?, at first completely motionless as in a photograph for five seconds, suddenly all the people walk away from the grave in all directions, with excessive haste, the shot continues until nobody is left standing by the grave.  Now one sees that behind the grave, at the wall, the land-surveyor has been standing with his tripod, he folds up his tripod and vanishes behind the wall.  A gunshot is fired, a second gunshot is fired.  The door of the Italian’s room on the second storey, as seen from the hallway.  The hallway is almost completely dark, but the outlines of the Italian’s door are clearly recognizable, the keyhole through which one hears, or such is one’s impression, Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3.  The music grows loud, the door opens, the camera shows the side of the room running along the front of the castle, to the right of the now-closed window an Empire writing-desk with a heap of letters, papers, documents, books, photographs, et cetera, in front of the desk is a chair, above the writing desk a woodcut print of Florence from the Nuremberg Chronicle, left of the door an Empire armchair, otherwise nothing, on the floor one notices the record player, the record player is shown, along with the record jacket, its title reads (in English) BÉLA BARTÓK  STRING QUARTET No. 3 et cetera, the record player is now playing as softly as possible, the camera now moves from the record player towards the right over the floor all the way to the sofa, on which the Italian is lying on his back, stretched out, entirely concentrated on the music, at the same time the audio tape with noises from the Italian’s trip from Florence to Wolfsegg begins playing, the tape is dominated by announcements of the train stations past which the Italian traveled the night before last, hence of Florence, Bologna, Padua, Mestre, Tarvissio, Böckstein, Salzburg, Attnang-Puchheim et cetera, Binario tre… et cetera.   The camera is centered on the profile of his head, shows the Italian’s left temple, which is completely motionless.  Amid the very soft strains of the Bartók music one hears over and over again the acoustic travel announcements, along with very short snippets, like blows, of the funeral march wafting up from the Fairview Inn.  Over and over again the same boilerplate train announcements from the stations, over and over again the fragments of march, along with the continuous soft strains of the Third Quartet.  The Italian has shut his eyes.  As if he is dreaming in a state of full consciousness.  After this shot the camera is centered on the door of the Spaniard’s room.  Then a shot like the previous one in the Italian’s room, a shot from the door of the opposite wall running along the front of the castle.  On the right side of the room, next to the window a rifle case in which about two dozen rifles are standing, the right folding-door of the rifle case is open, the Spaniard is standing in front of the rifle case, busying himself with a rifle, he loads a cartridge, walks with the rifle to the window, takes aim through the window at a point near the conservatory and remains standing in this position for four or five seconds.  One gets the impression that he is going to pull the trigger any second now, but he does not pull the trigger, he walks to the rifle case, puts the rifle into it, takes out another rifle, a double-barreled Gorosabel, walks with it back to the window, takes aim again at a point above the conservatory and remains standing in this position for four seconds, then the same procedure, he lowers the rifle, walks to the rifle case, where he opens the rifle, takes a cartridge out of the rifle, one sees that the safety catch on the rifle has been released, he puts the Gorosabel into the case, takes from the case a Mannlicher carbine and walks with it to the window, gazes down the barrel of the gun in search of the most direct line of fire on the conservatory, loads a cartridge that he has been keeping in the pocket of his dressing gown, again takes aim at the point near the conservatory.  Now a shot is fired outside, the shot that has been fired several times in the course of the film, but the Spaniard is not the person who has fired it, the Spaniard steps up to the window, looks out towards the conservatory, sees nothing.  Where did that shot come from? the Spaniard seems to be thinking, he walks to the rifle case and puts the Mannlicher carbine into it.  The camera is centered on the rifle case, shows very distinctly the engraved names MANNLICHER and GOROSABEL, the Spaniard once again takes out the Gorosabel, the Spaniard sits down in the chair in front of the rifle case, rises and walks to the door, peers through the keyhole as if wanting to make sure that he is alone, walks to the window, walks quickly from the window to the door and chains it as he turns the key in the lock, once again makes sure that it is chained, walks to the window, aims at the point near the conservatory and remains in this position for four seconds, the prevailing impression is that the Spaniard is a consummate expert in the use of small-arms, a consummate expert in the use of rifles, and of hunting-rifles in particular.  The camera now shows the Spaniard’s reflection in the mirror as he stands before the mirror, he takes aim at his own head, the Spaniard takes a step back and takes aim once again at his head, the viewer thinks that now he must fire, but the Spaniard does not fire, he puts the rifle into the rifle case.  He sits down gunless in the chair and, bending all the way forward, unties his shoelaces.  After he has finished untying his shoelaces, he sits back up and looks at the door as if he is looking through its keyhole.  He takes off his dressing gown, unbuttons his trousers, and finally takes off his shirt, the Spaniard’s upper body is completely swathed in a bandage, he takes off the bandage, now one sees that the Spaniard has a metal brace on his chest, the Spaniard’s entire upper body is supported by metal, it is stuck in a metal frame that is interlaced with leather straps.  The camera lingers on the Spaniard’s upper body until he has completely removed the bandage.  Under the chair is a large, tall powder-tin, with which the Spaniard now powders his bandage-free upper body.  He leans forward and pulls up his right trousered foot a couple of centimeters and powders it then pulls up his left trousered foot a couple of centimeters and powders it.  One sees that his legs are in metal braces that are fastened to his legs with leather straps.  Suddenly the Spaniard stands abruptly up and walks to the chest of drawers along the wall opposite the mirror and opens the top drawer, the camera reveals that this drawer contains nothing but bandaging paraphernalia, bottles, metal braces, pieces of leather, tins, pillboxes, juice-bottles, et cetera, once the Spaniard has stood up to walk to the chest of drawers, the chest of drawers is from the Josephine period, his movements are mechanical, as if a machine has just risen from the chair, one almost gets the impression that even the Spaniard’s head is a mechanical part, all of a sudden all the Spaniard’s movements are executed like those of a machine, this is especially evident in the way in which he opens the drawer of the chest of drawers.  The Spaniard takes from the drawer a metal frame that reminds one of the metal frames with which ice-hockey players protect their upper bodies and slips into the frame and walks, even more mechanically than before, to the chest of drawers, from the chest of drawers back to the chair and sits down in the chair and slips even deeper into the frame and puts his shirt and his dressing gown back on.  He leans forward again and pulls up his right foot and drops it and pulls up his left foot and drops it.  Now, once the Spaniard has completely buttoned up his dressing gown and only thereby assumed a rigid sitting position in the chair, he raises his head about five or six centimeters with the utmost physical difficulty and very slowly and cautiously opens his mouth as far as it will open and then closes it, four times the Spaniard slowly and carefully opens and closes his mouth.  Now he stands up and walks again like a machine to the rifle case, he is completely mechanized and opens the rifle case and takes out the Gorosabel and walks with the Gorosabel to the window and again aims at a point near the conservatory.  Three seconds.  At this moment there is a knock at the door, but the Spaniard, completely unfazed by the knocking, remains standing at the window, and taking aim at the point near the conservatory.  There is a second round of knocking, louder this time, but the Spaniard takes no notice whatsoever of it.  Now the Third String Quartet begins playing very loudly, but the Spaniard does not react to it.  The Spaniard lowers the gun, suddenly stands straight up and walks to the rifle case, puts the Gorsosabel into it.  He stands in front of the mirror (a large, two-meter tall oval-shaped mirror) and sticks, mechanically, his hands into his trouser pockets.  The camera shows him from behind, so that it is actually showing him from the front in the mirror, then from him the camera cuts to the view through his window, the entire prospect viewable through this window is shown, the inn-complex, the conservatory et cetera, are shown, then the camera is centered on the hundred people below (i.e., below the balcony) who are trying to enter the castle through the front door, a silent crowd of people is trying to get into the castle and cannot do so.   The Italian’s room.  The Italian is standing at the window, the window is shut.  No music.  No sound of any kind.  The Italian has his hands in his trouser pockets.  On the sofa a stack of Italian newspapers, L’UNITA et cetera, suddenly there is a cut to the record-player,which is switched off, once again one sees the title STRING QUARTET NO. 3.[20]    Suddenly the Italian walks to the sofa, picks up the copy of L’UNITA and skims the headlines, tosses the newspaper back on to the sofa, re-stations himself at the window, walks back to the sofa, lies down on the sofa, stretches his legs all the way out, props his feet up on the arm of the sofa nearer to the window.  He remains in this posture for four seconds.  Then the Italian stands back up and turns on the record-player.  Now there is a knock at the door.  The Italian says One moment, begins to bestir himself in reaction to the knock but then stops, as if he has forgotten the knock, there is another knock, he walks to the door, opens it, Girl No. 1 is standing in the doorway with a cup of coffee, the Italian drains the cup, returns the cup to the girl, he shuts the door and remains standing and listening out at the door for two seconds.  He puts on his dressing gown, which was hanging on a hook next to the door, and steps out.  The camera shows the Italian walking away from his room, after taking two steps he encounters a wall of people, he cannot go any farther.  He turns around, goes back into his room.  He comes back out and manages to make his way through the wall of people, the camera shows his head as he gradually makes his way through the people and all the way to the landing, from there he descends to the first floor, thence all the way downstairs and through the front doorway.  The camera shows only the forward-moving crown of the Italian’s head, as if from the perspective of the ceiling.  The kitchen.  Like the rest of the castle, the kitchen is crammed full of people.  On closer study one realizes that one has been observing the same people over and over again, all of them in black apart from those who arrived dressed in gray et cetera.  The cook and the girls are working in the kitchen, but they are being practically crushed to death by all the people.  The camera all the while remains stationed above, filming from a bird’s-eye perspective.  Suddenly there is a cut to a view of the inner courtyard of the castle, looking from the west side at the east side, opposite the rooms, at the Romanesque arch, one recognizes the Spaniard standing in the extreme right side of the Roman arch, in the extreme right side the gentlemen from the Jaguar, who are standing together in a group and talking to one another.  This shot lasts four seconds, then a fairly large shoeshine-box is placed on the wall and directly below the top of the arch, one recognizes the person who has placed the box there as Girl No. 1, she places several pairs of shoes in succession on the wall, on which several dozen shoes are already sitting and begins to polish the shoes.  The Spaniard observes the girl as she works.  The gentlemen from the Jaguar pay no attention to the girl.  Now the camera is looking down from a bird’s-eye perspective into the courtyard, in which a roe deer with a splinted right rear leg is seen, the deer hobbles laboriously, restlessly, about, the arch, along with the Spaniard, the girl, and the gentlemen from the Jaguar, is again shown, but the people up top take absolutely no notice of the deer down below.  The camera down in the courtyard now centers first on the deer, then the entire front of the arch along with the Spaniard, who is looking down at the deer, the girl polishing the shoes, the gentlemen from the Jaguar in motion, then two seconds of a still-photo shot, then a still-photo shot of the edge of the roof looking all the way up to the chimney flue, out of which fierce black smoke is ascending.  The camera is centered on the roof, on the land-surveyor standing at his tripod next to the chimney flue, and looking out over and past the conservatory.  Beginning at a at a distance of one meter from the land-surveyor, the camera slowly pulls away from the roof until it merges with the entire front of the castle, with the center of the view being directly above the front doorway, in front of which nobody is any longer standing.  Everybody seems to be inside the house.  The front door opens, the sister appears, as if she has been forced out by the people inside, the door shuts behind her, she is wearing a long black gown, it is double-breasted, with many buttons, and a broad collar, tailored with firm material at the waist, and black lace-up boots of soft goat’s leather, and no jewelry, her hair has been neatly and sleekly combed back, but left unknotted.  In her right hand she has a simple wooden lantern with a burning candle.  She locks the front door, as she is locking the front door, the camera shows a pile of sympathy mail next to the front door, in sharp focus are some black ribbon-encircled letters and cards of condolence, the sister looks at the pile, picks up a letter, looks at the address and tosses the letter back on to the pile and walks to the conservatory.  The grounds are completely empty apart from the cars, which take up two-thirds of the grounds.  Everything is suddenly sharply outlined, as during a clear, moonlit night.  The roofs of the cars are shown, once from the conservatory looking towards the castle, once from the castle looking towards the conservatory, then from the gate of the grounds looking towards the mountains.  Finally the camera, filming from the gate of the grounds, is centered on the sister, walking to the conservatory, behind the cars one sees only her upper body.  The sister disappears into the conservatory.  A shot from behind the head of the catafalque, sixteen candles are burning in sixteen candlesticks, next to the fifty wreathes stacked all the way to the ceiling of the conservatory.  The foot of the catafalque with the up-pointed toes of the dead man is shown, behind it in sharp focus is the cushion with the medals mounted on it, behind which stands the sister.  Suddenly there is a cut to a shot of the sister from behind as she raises her lantern over the corpse and looks into the corpse’s face.   She studies the face hypercritically and then sets the lantern down next to the corpse, on the right side of the catafalque and pulls a pillow out from under the catafalque and tries to shove this pillow, yet another pillow, under the corpse’s head, one gets the impression that she wants the corpse to lie even higher than it is already lying, there are already three pillows stuffed under his head, she wants to thrust another one under it, at first she does not succeed, then she does succeed.  Then she touches the spot on the dead man’s head from which she originally wiped away the encrusted blood.  Then she unbuttons the top button of the dead man’s jacket and adjusts his shirt and re-buttons the button.  Then she picks up the lantern and re-stations herself before the corpse and raises the lantern high and takes a deep breath and turns around and exits the conservatory.  The camera shows the sister walking back from the conservatory to the castle.  Again the depopulated grounds, two-thirds occupied by cars.  While the sister was still standing at the catafalque, the sound of a peal of bells began wafting up from the church, now the sister, having left the cars behind on her way to the castle, pricks her ears up at this sound.  For two seconds she walks noiselessly, soundlessly, to the front door.  Next a shot of a clearing at the forester’s house, the same illumination and presentation as before: like a clear moonlit night.  The Italian is walking in the company of the son along and up the river Traum towards the barn, their conversation is audible but not intelligible until they reach the barn, when the Italian is heard saying: reposing in reason in itself and possessing reason’s purpose in itself…Reason begets itself towards existence (hence forgets itself thereunto et cetera) and carries itself out…Thinking must become conscious of this purpose of reason…Mazzini, Campanella et cetera…the philosophical method can at first have something percussive about it, it can owing to the wretched pedestrianness of the representation come to regard even itself as concussive, as a repercussion…he who does not value thought as the sole truth, as the highest of the high, can form no opinion whatsoever of the philosophical method…and it is to be sure the desire for rational insight, for knowledge, not merely for a collection of things that are known, that is to be presupposed as a subjective prerequisite for the study of the sciences…a result with which I am therefore familiar, because I have been familiar with the whole for some time…it initially followed and will subsequently automatically follow from the contemplation of world history that it has unfolded rationally, that it has been the rational, necessary course of the so-called world spirit, a spirit that is the substance of history, a spirit whose nature is one and ever the same…and which in the existence of the world implies this single nature…the world spirit is spirit in toto…this must be, as  I said earlier, the outcome of history itself…we have to accept history as it is…we have to proceed historically, empirically, inter alia we must not allow ourselves to be seduced by historians, by professionals…they walk into the forest, disappear, come back out of the woods, as they are entering the clearing, the Italian is saying: the objects are stimuli to reflection…when one says the purpose of the world must issue from perception…no physical eyes, no finite understanding now if one proceeds like this with history, this is an a priori procedure and from the outset and intrinsically wrong…whether one thus speaks makes no difference to philosophy…in order to recognize substance, one must set to work with reason…to be sure one must not come with one-sided reflections, for these disfigure history and have their origin in false subjective views…if one approaches the world with subjectivity alone, one will find it be what one is personally constituted to find it…the universal does not pertain to the contingent phenomenon… here the multitude of particulars are to be grasped as a unity…here history is confronted by the most concrete object of all…The son is listening, he is trying to listen, but he is finding it very difficult to follow what the Italian is saying, everything that the Italian is saying exceeds his powers of comprehension.  The Italian continues: the negative side of the notion of change awakens our sorrow…what depresses us is the thought that everything must go under… the passions have ruined everything, ruined everything…of world history one may say in conformity with this abstract rule that it is the performance of spirit…among the Greeks the consciousness of freedom first arose and for that reason they were free, but they, like the Romans, knew only that a few individual men were free, not man as such…Plato and Aristotle did not know this… They walk out of the woods and towards the barn.  At the barn the son draws to a halt, the Italian draws to a halt, the son turns towards the clearing, the Italian also looks into the clearing.  The son says: here in the clearing as children we often used to play tag…suddenly: on a mass grave…the clearing is a mass grave.  In the clearing two dozen Poles were buried…secretly.  Enlisted men, officers.  I remember that they sought refuge in the conservatory, which my father always called the slaughterhouse, because the Poles were shot dead in the conservatory…he wanted to be laid out in the conservatory…at no point in his entire life did he escape from the screams of the Poles lined up against the wall…we never even went into the clearing.  Point-blank to the Italian: Remarkable that with you I have walked into the clearing.  In the conservatory the Poles walked into a trap….suddenly point-blank to the Italian: Do you think he shot himself?  The Italian gives no sign of having heard the question, keeps gazing into the clearing.  Now the son continues: They say that one of the Poles that were shot was a Potocki.  They walk silently into the forest.  As they emerge from the forest, the Italian is saying:…thus it is quite natural to be constantly fraternizing with the concept of abolition, with the concept of abolition…it is the classic form of suicide…the classic form of killing oneself…the Italian draws to a halt, as if he is looking towards the conservatory, coldly says: The gunshot to the head is a possibility.  The camera is stationed behind the head of the catafalque, the son and the Italian enter.  The arrangement of the catafalque is complete, with thirty-six candles and thirty-six candlesticks.  The cook is kneeling before the catafalque, she stands up when she notices that somebody has entered the conservatory, exits the conservatory, on her way out passing by the Italian, who initially hesitates, halts two steps past the entrance.  The son is stationed near the catafalque.  Next the Italian is also stationed near the catafalque.  From down at the Fairview Inn one can hear the band striking up the funeral march, which continues playing until the end of the film.  The son walks to the platform, which cannot be seen, and lifts up a glittering, strikingly gaudy actor’s costume, the camera shows the costume in sharp focus, the son lifts the costume into the air and while holding the costume turns to the Italian and points at it and says: Today we would have been performing the play.  Today, right now! says the son and flings the costume as far as possible into the background.  Once again he says: Right now.  The Italian steps up to the catafalque, from the front end of the catafalque the camera shows him standing fully erect among the candles.  The son steps up to him.  The Italian clutches at his own head.  As if he is thoroughly nonplussed.

THE END

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[1] =Wirtshaus Zur schönen Aussicht, literally, “Inn to the Fair Prospect”

[2] More literally, he “pulls” (zieht an) it: the mechanism is evidently rope-activated.

[3] About two miles south of Wolfsegg.

[4] If in his own pocket, why “re-[=wieder] pocket”?  If in Altar Boy No. 1’s, yuck!

[5] =HIMMEL, literally “sky” or “heaven,” whence, I suppose, the reiterated uppercase characters

[6] Perhaps a corrugated metal barricade, whence the noise.

[7] =schautsweidakommts, evidently a rather over-the-top upper-Austrian dialectal modification-cum-contraction of standard German’s schau, dass du weiterkommt (see to it that you move farther off).

[8] =griasgood, evidently an upper-Austrian sub-dialectal modification of the already exclusively Austrian greeting, grüss‘ Gott  “(May) God greet” {cf. (American-only?) English “God bless”}

[9] St. Marx—a slaughterhouse in Vienna, closed since “the middle ofthe 1990s.”

[10] About four miles southwest of Wolfsegg

[11] Or, possibly, “serum,” the usual translation in medical contexts.

[12] =servas, like grüss‘ Gott, an Austrian dialectal greeting 

[13] “rack...slung…over his shoulder”=Zöger, “a container for a bottle that one slings over one’s shoulder” according to one ElfriedeWondrusch  (who, to judge by certain orthographical liberties taken in her essay, is probably—though non certainly—an Austrian).  No, I don’t know if the conveyance of a heap of presumably unbottled meat in a Zöger constitutes a violation of its purpose, as Ms. Wondrusch’s is the only common-noun use of Zöger that I have yet managed to find. 

[14] St. Lucia Funeral March: composer unknown, although I would like to think it is the unnamed piece by Haydn played by the wind band in Extinction.  The websiteof a wind band from Waldburg, about 70 miles northeast of Wolfsegg, states that this march has been played since at least the 1890s and describes it as “to this day an integral part of any funeral in Waldburg.” 

[15] i.e., presumably, inserts one hand palm-downwards into each of the two gaps between shoulder and suspender.

[16] stain-shield=Vürfleck, Upper-Austrian dialectal term for a kind of apron worn exclusively by men.

[17] But which window?  Presumably it has more than one.

[18] Indeed it has!

[19] “Meat rack”=Fleischzöger

[20] Presumably this time on the record itself rather than on its sleeve.

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2013 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Thomas Bernhard. Der Italiener (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 5-67.   This book comprises the above screenplay; a fragment--also entitled Der Italiener--on which the screenplay is based; Drei Tage (Three Days), a modified transcript of a monologue delivered by Bernhard in a film directed by Ferry Radax (who also directed the film based on the above screenplay); and a brief afterword by Bernhard.  A complete translation of the book in PDF format is available here.