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WARM-UP
A complete entity consists of a beginning, a middle and an end Aristotle: Poetics
France, Here We Are!
The idea arrived by electronic mail and was Michael Glawogger’s brainchild. He was keen to make a film study of what it was like to be Austrian during the 1998 World Cup in France. The Austrian team was scheduled to play three games in the preliminary round, taking on Cameroon, Chile and Italy, and then possibly one more game in the final sixteen. It was tempting, though perhaps a little hypothetical, to imagine Austria walking off with the trophy. As it transpired, the ultimate glory eluded the team by a mere hair’s breadth: after their ten qualifying matches and the three games in the preliminary round, all they would have needed was four more victories.
The questions that intrigued us were: would the Austrian people feel more poignantly Austrian during the World Cup? Why should anyone be inspired to feel Austrian at the sight of eleven men kicking a plastic ball around the place on their country’s behalf? And assuming that the World Cup enhanced Austrians’ awareness of their Austrian-ness, did the same hold good for the people of other nations – in other words, would the phenomenon we set out to explore in our film attest to the existence of a patriotically oriented yearning for love, esteem, fame and sense of common identity? Evidently, sport – and here most notably soccer – possesses the power to transcend the bounds of private existence and generate a feeling of national community. People from widely disparate walks of life, idioms, social classes and income groups, owners of totally different makes of car, occupants of slums and stately homes gather together in a spirit of solidarity engendered by the sign of the crossbar. Communism is on its way out, the churches are losing their grip on society, capitalism is dividing humanity into winners and losers.
Yet sport – as disseminated by the mass media – transmits a message that is readily marked, learnt and inwardly digested the world over. Sport is the last of the meta-languages, the only surviving global ideology – albeit an ideology bereft of ideological substance but for the autocracy of the victors. Sport gives every ideology, from fascism to communism, from democracy to capitalism, an opportunity to occupy the limelight, take its bow and share the glamour of stardom.
The Austrian people revelled in the World Cup for two whole weeks, while immortality hovered a mere goal shot away. In rueful retrospect we have to concede it was a time ”when we were not really the kings”. Yet the T-shirts with their ”France, Here We Come!” messages were all printed up even before the team played its last, decisive qualifying match against Belarus in Vienna’s Prater Stadium. There was no halting Austria on its path to national self-glorification, and nobody seriously considered the possibility that we might not make it. The fascist regime that ruled Austria in the thirties was quick to take advantage of the legendary ”Miracle Team” of 1931/32, headed by Mathias Sindelar, as a welcome source of jingoistic propaganda and national identity. The Austrian squad’s 3:2 trouncing of Germany in the 1978 World Cup put an end to a long era of selfinduced subservience in this country’s favourite love-hate relationship.
”France, Here We Come!” portrays a handful of people and their reactions to Austria’s matches during the 1998 World Cup. If this study of soccer aficionados adds up to a portrait of Austria, we have no objection – indeed, we would say we had won.
Did we win? The film observes the observers. It documents the realities of the game as perceived by spectators in Austria but also in the countries against which Austria played: Cameroon, Chile and Italy. Another thing that intrigued us was juxtaposing the perfect reality presented by the television broadcasts with the spontaneous, imperfect reality perceived by the spectators. The sheer passion felt by those watching the games goes far beyond the confines of any rehearsed presentation, however professional it may be. While the reality shown on the TV screen may be so spellbinding as to dupe us into taking it to be the ”real”, aweinspiring reality, it is still broadcast with the sole purpose of prompting a response in the viewer.
There must be an intrinsic force, a root cause more potent than mere televised reality, whose secondary professionalism serves merely to meet needs, deficiencies and yearnings. Television is the servant. By comparison with other broadcast topics (”content” is the modern term), soccer – although it too is enlisted to serve a purpose – has the incomparable advantage of being invariably fresh, authentic and spontaneous. Gripping soccer is made up of that rare combination of perfection and free-style production. Even when the team you’re rooting for loses.
The outcome will always be a lesson learnt and a hope to cherish. For soccer is the most theatrical of sports and – in its own way – is true to the laws governing drama. The rules which Aristotle postulated in his Poetics inevitably apply to football too, just as they do to a film about football: ”Aesthetic satisfaction derives from greatness and order.”
GAME PLAY
PROLOGUE
Legs and feet are propelling a ball forwards, chasing it, while other pairs of limbs get in the way, tackle the kicker. The picture pulls back to show a scene from the Austrian squad’s last match before the World Cup. Shortly after hammering Liechtenstein six-nil, the team sets off for France.
Seated on the stand is Roland Spöttling. He is blind. Two friends are giving him a running commentary of the game. Roland is not happy with the way the team played, even if they did win hands-down. Press briefing. Journalist Johann Skocek is listening to national squad coach Herbert Prohaska and goalgetter Toni Polster offering their final comments before embarking on their pilgrimage.
Gérard Erber and his mother are packing for their first World Cup excursion. They will be watching every match the Austrian team plays, returning home in-between. Hard work, but they have no choice. In the nick of time Gérard unearths the T-shirt with Franz Wohlfahrt’s signature missing. A stroke of luck.
Telecommunications engineer Lehner coaches an under-13 team. He treats them all as if they were aspiring national team players. Which they are, of course.
ACT 1
Coach Prohaska looks set to include the ailing Andi Herzog and the faltering Anton Polster in his team. Like a bricklayer, Prohaska is frantically rummaging in the ruins of his qualifying-round squad for the plans of a building that might weather the buffeting of the World Cup.
Retired glazier Toni Ruhland watches the first game on the TV set in his local. He’s sceptical – and he knows what he’s talking about.
In Cameroon the Medicine Man chants incantations to invoke victory for the national team, known proudly as the ”Indomitable Lions”. The village people organise a TV set, put up the aerial, and the highly significant battle against the White Man commences.
Cameroon goes ahead. In extra time Anton Polster bangs in the equaliser. Austria breathes a deep sigh of relief, while Cameroon concedes that even indomitable lions can find the going tough. Coach Prohaska’s strategy was all awry. It’s a case of old dogs and new tricks.
ACT 2
Despite the glaring evidence of the training sessions, Prohaska seems reluctant to change his wonted line-up and will probably include Herzog and Polster again.
Frau Laurin works at a supermarket. When there’s an important match on television, the whole family – complete with uncles, brothers-in-law, daughters-in-law and grandfather – converges on her flat. Chile shoot a goal. The Austrians think it should have been disallowed. Although it was impossible to tell from the TV picture, the ball quite clearly never crossed the line.
The Chilean players celebrate the header by their divine Ivan Zamorano and the quick thinking of Marcelo Salas.
In extra time Ivica Vastic takes a right-footed swipe at the ball and it sails into the far corner of the net. The Austrians cheer, more from relief than jubilation perhaps, and the Chileans walk off the pitch with despondency written all over their faces.
ACT 3
Consensus reigns in Austria, from Chancellor Viktor Klima downwards: the Italians are a beatable opponent and will therefore be beaten. Prohaska has finally nominated the players who are playing best. Hannes Reinmayr and Ivica Vastic are in, Herzog is out.
The World Cup is a pilgrimage to the source of light. The pilgrims have come to the first crossroads. The Italians have consulted their history books and have ascertained that the days in which the Austrian team had a chance of beating them were back in the Stone Age. Austria puts its faith in miracles and wonders.
Glazier Toni has heard tell of wonders, but ”they’re the seven wonders of the world”.
The Italians score. Polster is taken off and, deeply insulted, goes to the cabin in a huff.
The Italians score again, and all Austria is insulted because their cherished predictions failed to come true.
In extra time Herzog shoots a penalty to make it 2:1.
The Austrian team have finally shown they can play attractive football. That was their downfall.
Had the Germans played the same game – so the unanimous verdict of the Austrian spectators – they would have had luck on their side and won.
Ivica Vastic says as long as there’s lesson to be learnt, there’s still hope to be nurtured.
EPILOGUE
In the quarter finals the Croatians put the Germans out of the contest. Global gratification.
The French emerge triumphant from the ultimate combat for the light and against the Brazilians. But that’s a story everyone knows. The drama is over, and man has learnt a lesson because the outcome took him by surprise.
Here too, soccer and Aristotle agree: ”In all probability much will occur that is improbable.”
Johann Skocek, December 1998
© M.Glawogger © Petro Domenigg
PRESS RELEASE DOWNLOAD:
france here we come .pdf
PRESS RELEASE:
WARM-UP
A complete entity consists of a beginning, a middle and an end Aristotle: Poetics
France, Here We Are!
The idea arrived by electronic mail and was Michael Glawogger’s brainchild. He was keen to make a film study of what it was like to be Austrian during the 1998 World Cup in France. The Austrian team was scheduled to play three games in the preliminary round, taking on Cameroon, Chile and Italy, and then possibly one more game in the final sixteen. It was tempting, though perhaps a little hypothetical, to imagine Austria walking off with the trophy. As it transpired, the ultimate glory eluded the team by a mere hair’s breadth: after their ten qualifying matches and the three games in the preliminary round, all they would have needed was four more victories.
The questions that intrigued us were: would the Austrian people feel more poignantly Austrian during the World Cup? Why should anyone be inspired to feel Austrian at the sight of eleven men kicking a plastic ball around the place on their country’s behalf? And assuming that the World Cup enhanced Austrians’ awareness of their Austrian-ness, did the same hold good for the people of other nations – in other words, would the phenomenon we set out to explore in our film attest to the existence of a patriotically oriented yearning for love, esteem, fame and sense of common identity? Evidently, sport – and here most notably soccer – possesses the power to transcend the bounds of private existence and generate a feeling of national community. People from widely disparate walks of life, idioms, social classes and income groups, owners of totally different makes of car, occupants of slums and stately homes gather together in a spirit of solidarity engendered by the sign of the crossbar. Communism is on its way out, the churches are losing their grip on society, capitalism is dividing humanity into winners and losers.
Yet sport – as disseminated by the mass media – transmits a message that is readily marked, learnt and inwardly digested the world over. Sport is the last of the meta-languages, the only surviving global ideology – albeit an ideology bereft of ideological substance but for the autocracy of the victors. Sport gives every ideology, from fascism to communism, from democracy to capitalism, an opportunity to occupy the limelight, take its bow and share the glamour of stardom.
The Austrian people revelled in the World Cup for two whole weeks, while immortality hovered a mere goal shot away. In rueful retrospect we have to concede it was a time ”when we were not really the kings”. Yet the T-shirts with their ”France, Here We Come!” messages were all printed up even before the team played its last, decisive qualifying match against Belarus in Vienna’s Prater Stadium. There was no halting Austria on its path to national self-glorification, and nobody seriously considered the possibility that we might not make it. The fascist regime that ruled Austria in the thirties was quick to take advantage of the legendary ”Miracle Team” of 1931/32, headed by Mathias Sindelar, as a welcome source of jingoistic propaganda and national identity. The Austrian squad’s 3:2 trouncing of Germany in the 1978 World Cup put an end to a long era of selfinduced subservience in this country’s favourite love-hate relationship.
”France, Here We Come!” portrays a handful of people and their reactions to Austria’s matches during the 1998 World Cup. If this study of soccer aficionados adds up to a portrait of Austria, we have no objection – indeed, we would say we had won.
Did we win? The film observes the observers. It documents the realities of the game as perceived by spectators in Austria but also in the countries against which Austria played: Cameroon, Chile and Italy. Another thing that intrigued us was juxtaposing the perfect reality presented by the television broadcasts with the spontaneous, imperfect reality perceived by the spectators. The sheer passion felt by those watching the games goes far beyond the confines of any rehearsed presentation, however professional it may be. While the reality shown on the TV screen may be so spellbinding as to dupe us into taking it to be the ”real”, aweinspiring reality, it is still broadcast with the sole purpose of prompting a response in the viewer.
There must be an intrinsic force, a root cause more potent than mere televised reality, whose secondary professionalism serves merely to meet needs, deficiencies and yearnings. Television is the servant. By comparison with other broadcast topics (”content” is the modern term), soccer – although it too is enlisted to serve a purpose – has the incomparable advantage of being invariably fresh, authentic and spontaneous. Gripping soccer is made up of that rare combination of perfection and free-style production. Even when the team you’re rooting for loses.
The outcome will always be a lesson learnt and a hope to cherish. For soccer is the most theatrical of sports and – in its own way – is true to the laws governing drama. The rules which Aristotle postulated in his Poetics inevitably apply to football too, just as they do to a film about football: ”Aesthetic satisfaction derives from greatness and order.”
GAME PLAY
PROLOGUE
Legs and feet are propelling a ball forwards, chasing it, while other pairs of limbs get in the way, tackle the kicker. The picture pulls back to show a scene from the Austrian squad’s last match before the World Cup. Shortly after hammering Liechtenstein six-nil, the team sets off for France.
Seated on the stand is Roland Spöttling. He is blind. Two friends are giving him a running commentary of the game. Roland is not happy with the way the team played, even if they did win hands-down. Press briefing. Journalist Johann Skocek is listening to national squad coach Herbert Prohaska and goalgetter Toni Polster offering their final comments before embarking on their pilgrimage.
Gérard Erber and his mother are packing for their first World Cup excursion. They will be watching every match the Austrian team plays, returning home in-between. Hard work, but they have no choice. In the nick of time Gérard unearths the T-shirt with Franz Wohlfahrt’s signature missing. A stroke of luck.
Telecommunications engineer Lehner coaches an under-13 team. He treats them all as if they were aspiring national team players. Which they are, of course.
ACT 1
Coach Prohaska looks set to include the ailing Andi Herzog and the faltering Anton Polster in his team. Like a bricklayer, Prohaska is frantically rummaging in the ruins of his qualifying-round squad for the plans of a building that might weather the buffeting of the World Cup.
Retired glazier Toni Ruhland watches the first game on the TV set in his local. He’s sceptical – and he knows what he’s talking about.
In Cameroon the Medicine Man chants incantations to invoke victory for the national team, known proudly as the ”Indomitable Lions”. The village people organise a TV set, put up the aerial, and the highly significant battle against the White Man commences.
Cameroon goes ahead. In extra time Anton Polster bangs in the equaliser. Austria breathes a deep sigh of relief, while Cameroon concedes that even indomitable lions can find the going tough. Coach Prohaska’s strategy was all awry. It’s a case of old dogs and new tricks.
ACT 2
Despite the glaring evidence of the training sessions, Prohaska seems reluctant to change his wonted line-up and will probably include Herzog and Polster again.
Frau Laurin works at a supermarket. When there’s an important match on television, the whole family – complete with uncles, brothers-in-law, daughters-in-law and grandfather – converges on her flat. Chile shoot a goal. The Austrians think it should have been disallowed. Although it was impossible to tell from the TV picture, the ball quite clearly never crossed the line.
The Chilean players celebrate the header by their divine Ivan Zamorano and the quick thinking of Marcelo Salas.
In extra time Ivica Vastic takes a right-footed swipe at the ball and it sails into the far corner of the net. The Austrians cheer, more from relief than jubilation perhaps, and the Chileans walk off the pitch with despondency written all over their faces.
ACT 3
Consensus reigns in Austria, from Chancellor Viktor Klima downwards: the Italians are a beatable opponent and will therefore be beaten. Prohaska has finally nominated the players who are playing best. Hannes Reinmayr and Ivica Vastic are in, Herzog is out.
The World Cup is a pilgrimage to the source of light. The pilgrims have come to the first crossroads. The Italians have consulted their history books and have ascertained that the days in which the Austrian team had a chance of beating them were back in the Stone Age. Austria puts its faith in miracles and wonders.
Glazier Toni has heard tell of wonders, but ”they’re the seven wonders of the world”.
The Italians score. Polster is taken off and, deeply insulted, goes to the cabin in a huff.
The Italians score again, and all Austria is insulted because their cherished predictions failed to come true.
In extra time Herzog shoots a penalty to make it 2:1.
The Austrian team have finally shown they can play attractive football. That was their downfall.
Had the Germans played the same game – so the unanimous verdict of the Austrian spectators – they would have had luck on their side and won.
Ivica Vastic says as long as there’s lesson to be learnt, there’s still hope to be nurtured.
EPILOGUE
In the quarter finals the Croatians put the Germans out of the contest. Global gratification.
The French emerge triumphant from the ultimate combat for the light and against the Brazilians. But that’s a story everyone knows. The drama is over, and man has learnt a lesson because the outcome took him by surprise.
Here too, soccer and Aristotle agree: ”In all probability much will occur that is improbable.”
Johann Skocek, December 1998