Die Ameisenstrasse

A large apartment block is falling into disrepair and its residents with it. Things are going downhill, and not just in the stairwell. You don't want any of the tenants in your neighbour's flat. How do we get out of this compulsion to live together? In the end, some manage to escape. Chain reactions run like clockwork. A small piece of damage to the woodwork here causes major damage in the flat below, which in turn is blamed on the neighbours and so on. Buster Keaton with his bad luck and clumsiness in building a house is not far away, you would just have to run the film backwards. Towards the end, you could be forgiven for thinking that something like domestic peace reigns. Yet everyone is just listening to a lecture about ants and other household pests crawling over the stairs and flats, food, beards and a rotting corpse with cockroaches and fat worms. But at least they all listen in rare harmony. A clever black comedy as a flawlessly constructed parallel plot. (Birgit Flos)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum