Bernhard Wicki

Over the course of one day and night, a novelist and his distressed wife lament over the disintegration of their relationship. Antonioni’s muse Monica Vitti smoulders as seductive socialite.

Adapted from a story by celebrated writer Ingeborg Bachmann, this early television film by Michael Haneke finds the Austrian auteur already exploring some of his key themes—of family dynamics, media, and the relationship between the individual and society at large—with subtle flashes of the famously rigorous style he would later develop. While visiting her elderly father in the small countryside town where she grew up, Elisabeth (Ursula Schult), a renowned war photographer, must reckon with both past memories and the meaning of her work.

A drifter wanders out of the Texas desert to reconnect with the young son he abandoned and find his missing wife.