Directed by Michael Haneke
With Paulus Manker, Rolf Hoppe and Sonia Bovo
Austria 1984, 83min, German with English sub-titles.
Who Was Edgar Allen?, produced in 1985, is a television adaptation of Peter Rosei's post-modern thriller of the same name in which a student travels to Venice to study against the wishes of his father and meets a mysterious figure who calls himself Edgar Allan. Mysterious deaths, all-seeing eyes, strange misunderstandings, and odd father figures are elements which structure Michael Haneke’s television-thriller. The director’s later concerns with media, invisibility, surveillance, and the bourgeois family are already present here.
In a seminar prior to the screening, panelists seek to discuss the film in light of its literary sources – the Peter Rosei book and stories by Edgar Allen Poe, as well as to relate it to Haneke’s later films—in particular to Caché, Funny Games, and The White Ribbon.
