VIENNA (Hollywood Today/AFP) 8/13/07 — Austrian film director Franz Antel, whose cinematic career spanned over seven decades, died overnight in Vienna at the age of 94, a spokesman for his wife Sybille said Sunday. “Mrs Antel wishes us simply to announce that the film director gently slipped away,” a spokesperson for the old persons’ home in Vienna where Antel was staying also said.

Born on June 28, 1913, Antel was initially known after World War II for making general entertainment films, many of them set in the Imperial era. A writer, director and producer, he then went on to produce more erotic films in the 1960s and in 1976 made “Casanova and Co.” with Hollywood star Tony Curtis.

Antel worked principally in his native Austria and in Germany and is best known for his 1981 feature “Der Bockerer”, about a naive and apolitical Viennese butcher who refuses to give in to the Nazi regime as the people around him get caught up in the events following Germany’s annexation of Austria.

He was awarded the Golden medal of merit by the City of Vienna in 2004. “Franz Antel was an Austrian legend… With his death, Austria has lost a great artist,” Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said Sunday. Culture minister Claudia Schmied added: “A century of Austrian film history has ended with his passing… Franz Antel represented the low and the high points of Austrian film and was a teacher and inspiration for many young talents who followed.”