Although he spent a relatively short period of his life in Austria, Canadian-born John Cook (1935–2001) remained, in his own words, "Viennese by choice.” Having worked as a commercial photographer in Paris, Cook’s […] first “regular” production was Schwitzkasten, based on a novel by the leftist writer Helmut Zenker. Today, the film is considered one of the few undisputed masterpieces of the New Austrian Cinema: a freewheeling, tender, and strangely humorous portrait of working-class (and out-of-work) lives.