Page - 51 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01

Punishment and Crime | 51www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/1, 47–61 By then the narrator, the schoolteacher, has already explained what is forc- ing him to tell this story: maybe these strange events can explain something about what happened later. The spectator at this point does not know that “later” could be a reference to the two World Wars. “Later” in the film we learn that the midwife is the doctor’s mistress and was his mistress long before his wife died. We see the doctor and Mrs Wagner having sex after his return from hospital. Later we have to witness the doctor sharply telling her that he hates sex with her because he is appalled by her ugliness and her character and that he cannot stand her and would be happy if she died. If we take the schoolteacher’s comments rather differently, restricting them to the span of the film, a new meaning appears for the opening scene. In the very first scene, Anna arrives immediately after the doctor has fallen off the horse, as if she might have been waiting for that event, and she looks first to see how the horse is doing and only then turns to her father. We also see that the hurried walk of Mrs Wagner could suggest that she is fleeing the scene of the crime. This conclusion is suggested by the film’s ending. Mrs Wagner borrows a bicy- cle from the schoolteacher and goes to the police in another village because she knows “who did it”. She never returns. The doctor, Rudi and Karli have by then disappeared from the village. And Anna, at that moment at school, says nothing. Because Mrs Wagner left so mysteriously and could not defend herself, in the aftermath of the events she is blamed for all the crimes. Very few spectators will have noticed Anna’s first checking the horse’s health and only then giving her attention to her father. I cite this detail here only to show that the film goes very far in giving information that obscures, rather than clarifies, the film’s meaning. Although characters refuse to talk and we have to guess the motives for their actions, most of which are hidden from sight, certain crimes/accidents/attacks indisputably occur: • The doctor’s horse trips over a wire, leaving the doctor seriously hurt; it takes him months to recover. • The wife of farmer Felder falls to her death through the rotten floor in the sawmill. • Max Felder ruins the cabbage field. • Sigi, the baron’s son, goes missing, is later found severely beaten, and takes a long time to recover. • The steward’s baby almost dies of pneumonia because someone intention- ally left a window open on a winter’s night. • The barn goes up in flames. • Karli, the midwife’s mentally handicapped son, goes missing and is later found with his eyes severely wounded; he has been left almost blind.