AN AUSTRIAN ASSORTMENT

By: Kenji

I must admit Austria is a country i’ve yet to get to grips with. In the late 80s, bound for Kitzbühel, on our only Austrian holiday to date, our coach was held up for 1 1/2 hours. Murmurs went round someone had got on the wrong coach. “There’s always one” i said to the person behind. A moment later our names were called by the tour escort. (Well, it was a cheap mystery destination break). Yes, there’s always one. All week, instead of sunny meadows a la Julie Andrews, it rained and rained. We waited in the queue for the chair lift at the bottom of the mountain to take us up the Hahnenkamm where Franz Klammer had famously been king of the slopes- turned out we were at the foot of the Kitzbühelerhorn. When we did get up the Hahnenkamm it was pissing it down. We had a great walk back down though, soaked through and wondering about any dangerous bears. At torrential Salzburg (so enticing and sunny in Hopscotch) my wife fell on the wet bridge. At Mozart’s birthplace we found we’d lost some money and from the horrified expression of the doorman must have been the first to ever turn away from the great man’s place. What heathens!

Austrian cinema is a bit slippery too. Preconceptions may be flummoxed. All that talent that helped make the German film industry great in the silent era, and then Hollywood. Take out the Austrians and the development of cinema is unimaginable. In recent decades many of the top directors have been involved with avant-garde films- Kubelka, Kren, Export, Mattuschka, Tscherkassky, Deutsch, Widrich, Arnold and others providing a very strong subversive undercurrent in a country often thought Conservative. See the Austrian section in Grey Daisies’ great list on the subject. This list certainly has a high proportion of avant-garde, but look too for some sharp intelligent documentaries. Anyone wanting the romantic elegant confections of old Vienna should be charmed by Willi Forst’s Masquerade (and Ophuls’ Liebelei and Letter from an Unknown Woman for good measure). In recent years, Austrian cinema has hit a rich vein of form, its international reputation enhanced by The Counterfeiters’ Oscar for Best Foreign Film along with the Cannes Palme d’Or awarded to White Ribbon.

I’m tempted to include in this assortment list Peter Lorre’s officially German classic Der Verlorene. Forst’s Die Sunderin, also from the early 50s, should be on Mubi. With Haneke (born Germany) i’ve gone for the Austrian rather than French stuff. The list is of the indigenous products, albeit including co-productions like White Ribbon, The Edukators and Darwin’s Nightmare. Not all are set in Austria: Jessica Hautner’s film Lourdes, about a “miraculous” faith cure, is set in…yes, you guessed it.
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The White Ribbon (an international co-production)

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Some Useful Links

CINEMA OF AUSTRIA

AUSTRIAN FILM DIRECTORS

SASCHA KOLOWRAT (pioneer)

WILLI FORST

OUTER SPACE (Tscherkassky)

VIENNA ACTIONISTS WEBSITE

MICHAEL HANEKE

GUSTAV DEUTSCH

DIAGONALE FILM FESTIVAL

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Austrian Born Directors (who found fame elsewhere)
Fritz Lang- M, Metropolis, The Testament of Dr Mabuse, Fury, The Big Heat
Otto Preminger- Laura, Bonjour Tristesse, Anatomy of a Murder
Josef Von Sternberg- The Blue Angel, Morocco, Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil is a Woman
Billy Wilder- Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment
Edgar Ulmer- People on Sunday, The Black Cat, Detour
Fred Zinnemann- High Noon, From Here to Eternity, The Day of the Jackal
Leontine Sagan: Madchen in Uniform

Austrian Set Films:
Blind Husbands
Joyless Street
Liebelei
The Great Waltz
Letter from an Unknown Woman
The Third Man
The Sound of Music
Hopscotch
Bad Timing
Amadeus
Before Sunrise
The Illusionist
Quantum of Solace

Internationally Famous Austrian Performers:
Helmut Berger
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Paul Henreid
Oskar Homolka
Curd Jürgens
Hedy Lamarr
Peter Lorre
Maria Shell
Maximilian Schell

Romy Schneider (Austro-German, born Vienna)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Anton Walbrook
Christoph Waltz
Oskar Werner

Suggestions welcome.

Not on Mubi:

Sodom und Gomorrha (Curtiz)
Die Stadt ohne Juden (Breslauer)
Sonnenstrahl (Fejös)
Vorstadtvariete (Hochbaum)
Bel Ami (Daquin)
Kassbach – Ein Porträt (Patzak)
Schwitzkasten (Cook)
Der Schüler Gerber (Glück)
Ein wenig sterben (Mahdavi)
Raffl (Berger)
Schmutz (Manker)
Heidenlöcher (Paulus)
Die toten Fische (Synek)
Weiningers Nacht (Manker)
Hasenjagd – Vor lauter Feigheit gibt es kein Erbarmen (Gruber)
The Silent Ocean (Schwarzenberger)

Deutsch makes striking use of found footage, as does Widrich, here with an exhilarating love of film:

My Favourites:
White Ribbon (Haneke)
Invisible Adversaries (Export)
Masquerade in Vienna (Forst)
Film ist 1-6 (Deutsch)
Outer Space (Tscherkassky)
Fast Film (Widrich)