The Man in the Attic and a most peculiar living arrangement
A made-for-TV movie based on a true story, The Man in the Attic tells a complex and startling tale of how a middle-aged woman and a young man created a most peculiar and morally troubling family arrangement.
The story begins in the 1910s. A youth named Edward Broder (Neil Patrick Harris) does repair work for factory owner Joe Heldmann (Len Cariou) and his wife Krista (Anne Archer). Joe gives us a clue to Krista’s rather dominant personality when he cheerfully tells Edward, “You should learn you don’t argue with my wife.â€
Indeed, Krista gives the impression of someone quite assertive yet traditionally feminine in appearance and domestic in interests. She enjoys sewing and “dabbles†in sculpting but her life appears to revolve around her son, an only child roughly the same age as Edward of whom she is fiercely protective.
Early in the film, the son sickens and dies, plunging Krista into grief and paving the way for her to turn her frustrated maternal impulses toward Edward. Those maternal impulses soon metamorphose into romantic yearnings and sexual desires for this attractive boy-man. The young Edward is soft, shy, and uncertain, all of which are erotically exciting to Krista. He returns her passion and they are soon engaging in a passionate love affair charged with Oedipal overtones.
Edward loses his job and apartment. Before his misfortune can tear them apart, Krista suggests he move into a place that “is free of charge and will let us see each other whenever we want to.†That place is her (and Joe’s) own attic. Of course, Joe must not find out about it so Edward must be careful to be quiet when Joe is home. When he’s not, of course, he will have the run of the home – and the pleasure of Krista’s company.
When Edward agrees to this arrangement, Krista has a man reserved to her in much the way that a Muslim man in an extremely traditional culture might keep a wife in purdah. Shut off from the outside world, he belongs completely to her. The submissive youth is someone she can mold into her servant and plaything and she wastes no time in doing just that. In one scene, Edward says he has been diligently reading the novel Krista gave him, the one about a manservant and his Queen. As they discuss the plot, she slips into the role of Queen and he just as easily takes on that of her slave. We also see Krista restrain Edward by tying his wrists to bedposts with pretty blue scarves, Edward kissing Krista’s foot, and Edward lovingly polishing her toenails. Harris and Archer give excellent performances and the scenes between them are charged with the special chemistry of dominance and submission.
Then disaster strikes but I won’t give more away in these pages than I already have. I would like people to get a copy of this fine film and see the entire story unfold and/or read the article I’ve got online at Court TV’s Crime Library about the case upon which it was based.
After seeing The Man in the Attic, I simply had to find more information about this bizarre incident. The personages in the real life events were Walburga “Dolly†Oesterreich, her husband Fred, and her much younger lover, Otto Sanhuber. While the filmmakers had allowed themselves a certain amount of poetic license, they had stuck fairly close to the facts. Dolly had lost a son about the same age as Otto, Fred owned a factory, and, most importantly of all, Dolly installed Otto in the attic of her home where he lived over ten years without Fred knowing their home had a third resident. Dolly was indeed the dominant woman depicted in The Man in the Attic and she had made an erotic dream of complete possession of her lover a reality. Otto may not have been completely subservient, however. He may have gotten a somewhat sadistic thrill out of having sex with a successful man’s wife in his own house and of being supported that man’s earnings. In his willingness to live cut off from the outside world he can be seen as an ultimate martyr for love. In his doing so in another man’s home he can be viewed as a kind of ultimately intimate thief.
Bibliography
The Man in the Attic made-for-TV movie.
Denise Noe’s “Otto Sanhuber†at http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/otto_sanhuber/1.html.
A previous version of this essay appeared in “The Dominant’s View.â€
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December 9th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
D.N., your complete essay at the link you provided answered all of the things I was speculating about in this not-so-bizarre case.
As you noted, the secret attic boarder represents Krista’s dead son, but in a sexualized mode that restores her need for faux-maternal Oedipal dominance. Given her personality disorder and sexual history, one might also question whether her deceased son was conceived with a past lover, rather than with her victim-husband.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I’d be interested to know whether there are differences in the depiction of sexual encounters that happen in the attic (if any) versus on the main floor of the house, as these represent different psychological domains.
It’s challenging to come up with a “men’s rights” spin on this historical anecdote, since the story’s depiction of female dominance, guile, manipulation, and pathology is today so universally accepted as mere ordinary realities in the feminist/(feminine?) modus operandi.
Both the men who were the objects of Krista’s attentions were her prey. (And, she got away with it due to chivalrous male-dominated courts! What’s new?)
All I can say is the young boyfriend was lucky he was tucked away and living for years in Krista’s attic.
Because, as any student of Freud knows, all the truly horrible and violent and R-rated things happen in the basement!
(BTW — excellent writing Ms. Noe. Is it your fascination with aberrance that has drawn you to MND?)
December 9th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Poor oppressed woman in a male dominated world. Puts a new perspective on male domination doesn’t it. She took it to a new level – the topmost in the house!