Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Based on the 1970 novella by Peter Handke, Wim Wenders' The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, completed in 1972, documents the warped journey of athlete Josef Bloch (Arthur Brauss) as he slowly and unhysterically transitions from a professional football goalie to a peripatetic madman.In Vienna. After being ejected from a football match for missing a penalty kick, and angrily resisting what he sees as a bad call, Bloch takes a trolley to a cinema, where he buys his ticket from a female cashier (Erika Pluhar). He watches a Western. Later that night, he books a room, and lazily fiddles with a television on the front desk to catch a re-cap of the day's game. After checking in, he goes outdoors to make a phone call. Despite being told that the payphone isnt working, he tries to call someone anyway, only to fail. Weary, he then waits outside the same cinema he visited earlier in the day, and watches the female cashier get into a car and drive off. Back at the hotel, he asks for a paper. Not having any, the hotel clerk offers him a crime novel instead, but Bloch has walked away by the time he returns with the text. Bloch goes to bed.At breakfast the next morning, he scans the local newspaper, searching for the football game results. He takes a brief walk and enters a sports bar; Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby" is blaring from a jukebox, and many pictures of footballers adorn the walls. While looking at the pictures, Bloch strikes up a conversation with a girl standing beside him, and tells her of a former teammate who disappeared after moving to play football in the United States. The two go walking to the girl's apartment building and, while riding the elevator to her room, he touches her suggestively. After a time, they are on the street once more, where they part. Bloch continues his search for the football match results, taking in street attractions and merchant booths along the way. While walking through a dark alley, he is the victim of an attempted mugging; one stopped short by the appearance of passers-by. Shaken, Bloch continues on his way through town, ultimately arriving at the same cinema he visited earlier. He chats briefly with the same female cashier, gets a ticket for a seat with extra legroom, and watches a movie about counterfeiters.After the movie, he stands in a dark alley adjacent to the theater, waiting once more for the cashier to leave. This time, he follows the girl onto a bus, first sitting behind her before boldly moving to her front. Though she appears not to notice him at first, when both get off at the same spot, she allows him to accompany her to her residence, where they then have sex. The next morning, Bloch is the first up. He opens her blinds, and sees (and hears) that she lives near an airfield. While she sleeps, Bloch takes a shower, his face betokening a mix of relaxation and disturbed contemplation. Bloch's shower wakes the girl who, over breakfast preparations, tells Bloch of a recurring dream of hers in which she wears a dress made of money that breaks out into flames at odd intervals. After switching on some Top-40 rock music, she prepares to run errands; Bloch requests that she bring him back a paper. While eating breakfast, formal introductions are made: Josef Bloch, professional goalkeeper; and Gloria, cinema cashier. Gloria remarks that she thought Bloch a boxer first, due to his many bruises. They continue to talk, with Gloria relating a tale of watching a football match with a former beau, and Bloch recalling a flub made during a game, along with his football-related travels to South America and the United States. He takes an interest in one of the postcards Gloria has posted by her mirror. Laid out on her bed, she says she's a collector. Bloch drops the postcard and joins her, stiffly reacting to the playful strangling motions she directs his way with one of her ropes. Suddenly, Bloch reaches out and chokes Gloria dead.We find him next sprawled out on Gloria's carpet, groggy. Aware of what he has done, Bloch wipes every utensil and every surface free of his fingerprints, and swipes the American currency lying on Gloria's table. He then returns to the hotel from two nights ago. After paying the 300 shilling bill, Bloch curiously fakes punching the hotel clerk before walking away. He enters the cinema once more, is found to be sleeping in the seats and is asked to leave. Angrily, Bloch knocks the concessionaire's flashlight from his hands and storms away. The concessionaire files a complaint and, when questioned later by the local police, Bloch reluctantly professes to not intending to knock the flashlight away, saying it was just a reflex. Later, Bloch boards a bus and, in the process of sitting down beside an old woman (Rosl Dorena), American coins spill out of his jacket. When the woman looks at him askance, Bloch casually passes off the coins as money left over from his time spent playing football in the United States. During a long bus ride through the countryside, Bloch completes a crossword puzzle and temporarily disembarks at a country bar, where he plays one record on its jukebox before re-boarding the bus. He rides until arriving at the bus terminus, listening to American rock n roll on his pocket radio. Once off the bus, Bloch finds a free room at a hotel. While being shown to his room (upstairs, adjacent to a bowling alley), Bloch asks the hotel girl if she knows an acquaintance of his, one Hertha Gabler (Kai Fischer). The girl replies to the affirmative, saying Gabler leases the Border Inn by the customs border. The next morning, the townspeople speak of a local handicapped boy who has been missing for three days. Bloch takes a newspaper, and finds that the mysterious murder of a female cinema cashier is front page news. He quickly hides the page, and reads the story of the missing cripple. He then leaves the hotel, and enquires for directions to the Border Inn.After receiving very detailed directions from two women in a store. Bloch has one of them mend his jacket; he also buys shirts. Outside, a cop car drives by, and Bloch becomes visibly worried. He leaves town, and walks on the roadside until he reaches the Border Inn. When he arrives, he is informed by the Inn's female employee that Gabler is sleeping; he orders a beer, establishes that he knew Gabler in days past, and listens as the employee tells him of a man from out of town who tried to force himself on Gabler under the guise of wanting to dig a well, and wanting to see the Inn's cellar. While waiting for Gabler, Bloch finds an unplugged jukebox, activates it, and plays more '50s rock. When Gabler arrives, she says that she saw his name in the paper recently. He's taking a break from the game, he says. She talks about the make-up she dons when out at night, and how it covers her up well. Bloch says he'd know her still by her blue eyes. Before leaving, he helps Gabler move furniture, and says hell stop by again in the morning. While walking by a one-room schoolhouse, Bloch comes upon an old man chopping wood. The man criticizes the local school system, and bemoans how kids today cant speak one proper, original sentence; it's all rote memorization, he argues. The next morning, Bloch mails a postcard at Gabler's; while entering Gabler's place, he grimaces at the weird smell outside. Gabler says one of the neighbors just died. Bloch asks of border guards, rent, and what number Gabler starts with when counting. He says he doesn't count the ones anymore, and adds that he almost got run over this morning while crossing the street for he only saw the second car. Gabler's young daughter, who has been easily frightened ever since the cellar incident, runs in and complains about the dead flies the neighborhood boys have placed under her pillow. Gabler explains to Bloch that the neighborhood boys are staying over until the body is buried, and shoos her girl away. After asking how country people do their loving, Bloch remarks that he saw a woman with a spot of blood on her dress two days back.The next morning at the hotel, Bloch strikes up a conversation with some locals who are interested in the appraisal of items. Bloch then gets a haircut, telling the two women in the shop (Monika Poschl, Sybille Danzer) that he places more trust in male hairdressers. The two women laugh, and say that they had bet on him being either a goalie or a boxer, and both admit to enjoying standing behind goalies and making them nervous. Bloch says he wouldn't be made nervous so easily. He then wanders through the countryside, passing the time staring into a stream. Later, after telling his host at the hotel that he'll pay for the room in the evening, he attends a football practice and exercises behind the goalie, shadowing his movements. Back at the hotel, he wakes up during the night and barfs into his sink. When he arrives late to breakfast the next morning, he admits to the hotel girl that he likes the place.Nevertheless, he becomes very much concerned by a headline in the paper announcing that the cripple boy was found dead in the same stream he stared at the day before. He tries phoning a Mr. Schneider, asks of a football practice, has a difficult time comprehending what is said to him, and is then disconnected. Later, in a meat shop, Bloch laughs with the butcher at the news that the cripple boy's bloated body was mistaken for a mattress, and then returns to the stream. In the evening, he meets the same hairdresser girls from a day before, and tells them of a dream he had. Bloch then wanders into a bus stop bar, meets some guys, and follows them to the cinema. They then embark for a small club, where Bloch meets up with Gabler, and listens to a jukebox spinning '50s hits. He drinks, and starts to play cards with a group of men. Just as the tune "Gloria" plays, Bloch, who is blankly staring at his hand of cards, tosses his chips in a guy's face and proceeds to fight him outside, where it is raining steadily. Bloch gets beaten up badly, and is left out in the rain. He stumbles back inside, drinks, and dances wearily with Gabler before returning with her to the Border Inn. There, they discuss diverse things until Gabler begins to rail on him for his slovenliness and messiness. Before the situation becomes any more intense, a border official (Bert Fortell) pops in and requests an umbrella for his walk home. Gabler assents, and Bloch volunteers to accompany the man on his way home. During the trek, the border officer shares with Bloch what it is like to be in law enforcement, how the crime rate in town has declined since the mining of the frontier, and how keen observations and swift reactions to movements are key to successfully catching a crook. Once home, the border officer offers Bloch a drink. He declines and returns to the hotel. Bloch listens to his pocket radio.In the morning, on the way down to breakfast, Bloch encounters a man and asks of the reading habits of the locals. He learns that the guests like to read the newspaper, and that the townsfolk usually read magazines. In the dining room, the hotel girl hands Bloch a paper. On the front page, there is a police sketch which bears great resemblance to him. He wanders away from the hotel, spooked. While waiting at a nearby bus stop, Bloch reads a headline in bold: "Hot Clue in Gloria T. Mystery?" When the bus comes, he stares at the driver, and does not board. Instead, he heads to the local football field and observes the ongoing match. While watching, he shares his experiences and his feelings on the game with a salesman (Michael Toost) sitting beside him. Bloch reflects on how hard it is to focus on anything but the ball during a game, and how strange it is to see a goalie running around without the ball involved. During a penalty kick, Bloch tells the salesman of the anxiety which runs through a goalie's head when not knowing what corner the ball will come to, and what the kicker is aiming at. Ultimately, the goalie blocks the ball, and the match continues. Bloch and the salesman watch in silence.FINIS

Review: Handke and Wenders explore patterns of thought and their relation to reality..
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (In German with English subtitles), a film by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke from a novella by Peter Handke (1971).The Goalie s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is the first collaboration of Wim Wenders and Peter Handke, a collaboration which produced Wings of Desire in 1987.
In The Goalie, Handke and Wenders explore patterns of thought and their relation to reality.The main action of the film occurs in the first minute, where we get one view of how the Goalie misses blocking a penalty kick and loses the game for his team.Later, we get to hear him describe the action and we also get a view of the way it really happened, the videotaped highlights on the tv news.
While only one explains the goalie's anxiety before the penalty kick, all three allow for his anxiety afterwards.The night after the game, the goalie goes to see "Red Line 7000." This was James Caan's first starring role, a movie about wild young stock car racers getting hooked up with women drawn to them for their romantic image, yet making them settle down once hooked.
A Film about moving away from the action and into mundane adult life.
So it is that the goalie's anxiety concerned with the end of playing for a living and the beginning of a mundane existence.Then the goalie sees a film called "Die Zitten der Faelschers" (Faelschers > counterfeiters) and he makes a joke about it.
Our hero picks up the ticket girl at the theater and they end up in her apartment, where he kills her as she prepares to leave for work the next day.
I suspect Wenders & Handke intend for us to imply that he is killing in this film the thing that got Caan in "Red Line 7000." Several sequences later, the goalie sees another movie, "Gross Mandel," which I cannot identify.Now Wenders plays with our patterns, our expectations.
He is trying to get the viewer to evaluate his/her own preconceptions and expectations about plot.Several portentous scenes play out to nothing, in the end.
(In the novella, the goalie sees the missing boy s body float by in the scene on the footbridge).
The goalie sees a movie "Nur Nach 72 Stunden" ("72 Hours to Go," the pilot for the tv show "Madigan"), what a build up for the goalie as a prime suspect being caught or shooting it out.
The goalie's explanation: Until the shot is made, all possible plays are equally real to the goalie, he must decide which play to defend (which probability is real).Which is real?
Based on the novel "Die Angst des Tormannes beim Elfmeter" by Austrian existentialist writer, Peter Handke, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a powerful and unnerving film by the great German director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas).
As the film opens, the goalie, Joseph Bloch, (Arthur Brauss) is suspended from a soccer game in Vienna for missing a penalty kick.
Seemingly not upset, he goes into town, then commits an unplanned and seemingly unmotivated murder of a cinema cashier.
Presenting us with a world that does not fit our picture of what constitutes rational behavior, Wenders refuses to explain the goalie's senseless action.
Bloch simply continues his life in a matter-of-fact way, although a great deal of emotion seems to be churning under the surface.
He goes to the movies, converses with the local residents, drinks a lot, gets into a fight, and ostensibly waits for the police to close in.
As stated by Adam Groves in his review in The Cutting Edge, "He may be a homicidal sociopath, but Joseph seems to fit in quite well with the world around him, which seems to be the whole point"Bloch talks about his life as a goalie throughout the film.
At the end, he wanders into to a local soccer game and explains to a visiting salesman the thoughts that go through a goalie's mind during a penalty kick, for example, how the goalie must outguess the shooter.
Perhaps dramatizing the dehumanizing effects of modern society, Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a strange, intriguing, and complex film that definitely deserves repeated viewing to unlock the puzzle.
Maybe the best movie I've seen in my life.
I just want to say that this movie, when I watched it first time long ago, opened the doors of what cinema could say, in which ways, and how it could go as far as possible from a typical theatrical or literary (linear,logical, rational) treatment of its artistic matter; pursuing a more "musical" or "harmonically oriented" approach.Wenders develops this work as a series of "climates" or ambiances(we're talking "street" climates and ambiances, sometimes ugly or ridiculous; not that silly "grandeur" that spoils so many artworks) that contain valuable, almost satirical remarks on the "cheating" that our expectations and concepts are constantly playing to our minds.The particular sense of humor and drama of the script writer and the director just hit a string on me; as did the musical score.
It is difficult to comment on such a brilliant movie without having read the book first, or even better, being familiar with Peter Handke's narrative works.
While it may seem evident (to us, accustomed to Hollywood's conventional plots) that the main character of The Goalie...
Handke's approach to narrative is to reflect exterior signs, rather than enter the character's inner thoughts.
Same applies to the goalie: he would not speak his mind, therefore we, and even Handke himself (or Wenders) can not enter his own intimate realm.
Whatever his reasons are for what he does (and murder is only one of his unexplained acts) we can not know them.
The film is about communication between people more than murder.
It is funny that most of us would assume he is mad just because we can not find an account of his acts: if you think about it, in the real world outside the movie realm, most people -and even our closest friends- would not tell us why they do what they do.
For me, Jurgen Knieper's score serves the story well; the tune still comes back to me all these years later.It's a simple monotonous tune, the main parts being just two notes that the small chamber group works back and forth.
It may not sound like much, but in reality it becomes mesmerizing, almost like a 2nd main character, and something that won't release you, like fate.The film, of course, is genius.The understated music matches the film's lack of much excitement or development.
The visuals and music work to produce a profoundly unsettling look at the monotonous life of the murderer..
Wim Wenders was always the most cerebral, the most cinematic of the three Giants of New German cinema (albeit Giants enough to bear favourable comparison even to cinematic Giants-For All-Ages such as Fritz Lang, and FW Murnau).
This film, despite the directors acknowledgements of the influence of Alfred Hitchcock - evident throughout - is A Masterpiece of control and content - admirable in a mature work by an established director, astonishing as a feature debut.The title is relevant only in a later, casual, conversation the eponymous character has with a provincial policeman, where the policeman innocently spills out his m.o. when confronted by a criminal, but such is the nature of this study that we can't immediately be sure the psychopath is taking everything in.
(I saw parallels in the murder scene with a similar scene in Hitchcock's underrated 'Frenzy', but only in the way it was shot, and the aforementioned foreplay).His scanning of every subsequent news report might suggest he's worried, that the noose is tightening around him.
Like the prototype psychopath, compassion is conspicuous by its absence from his every thought and action.
But yet, in best cinematic tradition, what 'he' doesn't know is that we can see his every action, can scrutinise his every thought.
Best film about goalkeepers!.
While most reviews state the arc of the story well, it seems the details of what happens to the goalkeeper in the opening scene are not well understood.
He is clearly sent off for dissent, kicking the ball away in protest after it has been placed in the centre circle after the referee awards a goal.
He has not committed a foul, and he isn't dismissed because he fails to save the shot on goal, something which is not a rule of the sport.
He approaches the referee and protests that a player was clearly offside when the goal was scored.
When the referee ignores his complaint, the goalkeeper walks over to the ball in the centre circle and kicks it away.
Although the referee isn't seen to produce a red card, he is heard to say something (in German obviously) about red, all of which clearly tells us the referee sent him off for the act of dissent.As for the goal scored, we do not see a penalty kick being taken, and the way the scene is shot, as well as the fact that he protested that an attacking player was offside when the goal was scored, suggests more that the goal is scored in open play rather than from a penalty kick where by definition no-one could be offside if the goal was scored from a direct kick (rather than say after the goalkeeper saved the initial effort and normal play resumed -- to satisfy the even more pedantic!).
While it would be interesting if we saw the goalkeeper face a penalty, then see it "as it really is", an anti-Rashomon, on TV, it doesn't seem to me (at the risk of being too literal-minded, perhaps) that this is what Wenders filmed or intended.
The TV footage does not seem to show the match in which the goalkeeper played.
And once again, there is no penalty kick in that televised match, but the goal is instead scored from open play with defenders crowding the 18-yard area.
It does not feel like this is a detail we are intended to connect to the match he played.
In the final scene, we see another goalkeeper actually save a penalty kick by guessing correctly which way to dive, finally showing us the alternative outcome of a confrontation which the sport takes for granted is heavily stacked against the goalkeeper.There is a surreal, dislocated quality to the goalkeeper's behaviour in the opening scene.
He leaves the field of play while his own team has possession in the opposition's final third, and addresses some children behind the goal.
At this point in play, with no goalkeeper defending the goal, it would have been natural for the opposition to take a long distance shot on goal, so any normal goalkeeper would have got back on the field immediately to discourage that.
Any normal goalkeeper probably would never have left it in the first place, of course, but this is 1970s New German Cinema after all and clearly his angst is greater than the instincts which propelled him to the position of professional shot stopper: he doesn't return to the field until what seem to be the last seconds before a goal is scored, and he stands there rooted to the spot as the ball hits the back of the net.
His actions prior to the goal suggest he's suffering from apathy prior to his dismissal, rather than that his dismissal so profoundly affects him that this alone accounts for his subsequent state of mind and actions.The Camus references -- goalkeeper; inexplicable, passionless act of murder -- are entertaining..
"The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" is a unique experience.
Alternately strange, boring, and fascinating, it's the story of a professional German football goalie who simply walks off the playing field one day and proceeds to roam the city idly, stopping to pick up newspapers (to check the scores), watch movies, loiter around, and commit the random murder of a ticket-girl at the cinema he frequents.
The second half of the film is a journey to the country to attempt to reconcile things with an old girlfriend.
He just does it and moves on, and it is in this respect Wenders' film is in a class by itself.
With its unwillingness to rationalize or justify the main characters' actions, this film completely sets itself apart from the dull psycho-serial killer genre and offers a new way to depict a man gone mad.
It's a great film, though not for the attention-span challenged, and has a chillingly effective minimalist score.
A goalie without a goal which equals a movie without a goal.
"Die Angst Des Tormanns Beim Elfmeter" ("The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick") is a story about things falling apart and no one paying attention to them, people acting as if everything was OK while living in a disintegrating world.
The goalie of the title is Joseph Bloch (Arthur Brauss), an unsympathetic and ruthless man who was kicked out of a match after a foul play who goes out on a rampage of murder for obscure reasons (possibly none) by killing a female cashier - whom he spent the night with - and a deaf boy - still unclear to me if he has part on his assassination, later on ruled as an accident.
What goes on is Bloch's sort of escape going from place to place, hotel to hotel, being rude with people and other times he's beaten by strangers after provoking them, or he's robbed by muggers, not knowing how to react, and develops relations with other women.
So, he just keep on randomly walking and putting things out of order.Easily one of Wim Wenders weakest, and one of his toughest watches of all since he doesn't make anything appealing, sometimes even not worthy seeing, filled with empty actions, poorly presented situations and mundane acts that doesn't add anything to a plot that has very few to show.
There's few things which Wenders got it right while making his wrong presentation.
He doesn't offer motive, reasons why his main character goes out killing people.
Who could give reason to a murderer?
It's not, it's simple abominable, unexplainable just like the movie.
The very last scene, when Joseph casually watches a soccer match, chatting with another guy, he tells the whole movie in an almost poetic manner.
He explains to the man why the viewers focus on the game must be on the goalie instead of being in the player or the ball.
Same thing with the movie.
There's plenty of indications that this man is a murderer, he goes from one erratic behavior to another, almost to the point of getting caught by the police and he even helps one officer with a minor problem, yet everyone around fail to notice him or his actions.
That scene has plenty of depth, too bad the movie isn't just like that moment.Distractive (and not in a good way), a little misguided but somewhat engaging, "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" worths as an imaginative way of breaking storytelling conventions with its fragmented narrative repleted of ordinary dialogs and some expectation when everything is silent.
Difficult, unpredictable and strangely not menacing as films about psychos tend to be.
I don't get the reviewers who compare it to the brilliant Camus novel "The Stranger" since the main character from the novel has more explained (in the unexplainable) reasons for murder than the goalie.
In it, you have a main character who you know nothing about and could care less about simply commit a murder for apparently no reason.
Well, when I watched this film, it felt like a case of Déjà Vu--the main character, who you never really understand and could care less about kills a woman about mid-way through the movie for apparently no reason.
None of this is revealed--you just watch this guy over the period of a few days go about his terribly boring life (that is, apart from killing women).
Frankly, after watching the film I just found myself not caring one bit one way or the other.
There were certainly better ways I could have spent my time than watch this video..
"Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter" or "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" is a 100-minute movie from almost 45 years ago and it was the breakthrough for German filmmaker Wim Wenders.
He directed here and also worked a bit on the script, even if the main effort in terms of screen writing (according to the credits) comes from Peter Handke, who also wrote the novel that this film is based on.
You could call this movie here a film during which really nothing happens at all apart from one scene (and the very first scene maybe as well).
Joseph Bloch is a professional athlete and I personally see him as a man hungry for recognition and power.
When his ego cannot take a referee's behavior, he commits a horrific act in order to restore the belief in his own power.He is also a sociopath.
After the act, he lives a life just like he did before.
One great example of his self-confidence is when we hear another character mention that the killer probably has a mustache by now, but Bloch did not even think about it.
Apparently, police come closer to catching him, but we do not find out definitely if they do, which is a bit surprising as they get closer and closer while the film continues.
In the last scene, Bloch makes a cat/mouse reference that applies to goalkeeper and the one who shoots the penalty as well as to him and police without his conversation partner understanding the latter.I thought Wenders and Handke made a pretty good film here.
This is certainly a very atmospheric watch and I believe Arthur Brauss (who turns 80 this year) was a really good choice for the main character.
About the movie, however, it was a really solid watch and I recommend it.