NYFF Review: The Loneliest Man in Town Offers a Charming Ballad

Al Cook is both a true original and a derivative. He’s an Austrian blues musician who’s styled himself in the mold of Elvis Presley. With a salt-and-pepper pompadour and hairline to be jealous of, the septuagenarian looks like a cross between Robert Mitchum and Joe Strummer. He sings the kind of blues that would appear in the first half of a Ken Burns documentary on the artform, before it evolved into fast-paced rock n roll. Blues is its own mix of originality and replication, with an unmistakable formula for enumerating life’s misfortunes over heartbeat-like strums. It shares that common aesthetic in order to be egalitarian and accessible because it expresses the universal themes of heartache and hardship.

Those melancholy rhythms drift through many scenes in The Loneliest Man in Town, in which directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel take a blues song-turned-screenplay and place Austria’s most accomplished devotee at the center. It’s a portrait of an idiosyncratic artist who’s outlasted nearly everything from his past except his dreams. Quiet and endearing, The Loneliest Man in Town follows the blues ethos of making something meaningful from adversity and is, like Al Cook, an eccentric delight in its own modest way.

Al Cook lives the blues in every sense. He lives alone, the sole occupant of his apartment as well as the entire building. With plans for its demolition, he’s the only one who didn’t take a buyout from the pushy landlord. More than his home, this is his studio and where he was born. He ain’t got nobody to help decorate his Christmas tree, pouring himself champagne from a tiny bottle and adorning his tree before the landlord fiendishly cuts his power. When the needle on his turntable grinds to a halt, he pulls out his guitar and plucks “Silent Night” into the lonesome darkness. That quiet defiance continues when they follow through on a threat to shut off his water and Al heads to his local pub to shave. Reluctant to accept the holding company’s final offer, he at last relents once their hired goon makes it his business to be Al’s menace of a roommate. Al reveals to the cartoonish thug that, despite his deep connection with the blues, he’s never visited the United States. A revelation strikes Al when he watches an old interview with himself where he shares that his wish is to get out of “the narrow-minded Austria.” With Vienna on the cusp of chewing the last bit of Al Cook up and spitting him out, he decides to sell his things and buy a one-way ticket to the Mississippi Delta.

The blues aren’t just his life, but his lifestyle. Though born Alois Koch, he goes by Al Cook to better suit his rockabilly persona. From an eclectic mid-century wardrobe to his records and books, he’s immersed in the work of Robert Johnson and Ma Rainey the way some are with baseball or horror movies. But, sans sentimentality, he begins selling off his collection to fund his pilgrimage. Each sale feels like peeling off a layer that bares the depth of his lifelong dedication to the appreciation and interpretation of the blues. It should feel gut-wrenching to watch him shed his collection; instead the items seem they’re being reclaimed through his loving preservation. It’s clear that these were important but not essential once he stuffs that indispensable ephemera into his bag and guitar case.

At a small gig, Al sings his eponymous 1976 song “The Loneliest Man in Town.” However, that claim is open to debate when he strikes up a friendship with an old girlfriend who dumped him for the sin of gifting her—a Beatles fan—an Elvis record. It’s the one bit of luck that blows his way and blossoms into a lovely relationship. We part with Al holding his life in both hands, but Covi and Frimmel allow us to decide where he’s taking it.

The Loneliest Man in Town screened at the 2026 New YorknFilm Festival.