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Screening Transcendence: Austria's Emigrantenfilm and the Construction of an Austrofascist Identity in Singende Jugend
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 April 2009
Extract
Political developments between 1933 and 1934 placed Austrian cinema under more governmental control than at any time since World War I. In 1934 the new chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, attempted to counter a looming civil war and the growing power of the Austrian National Socialists by disbanding the embattled parliament and instituting a nonparty clerico-authoritarian corporate state, often referred to as Austrofascist. Although Dollfuss's Fatherland Front was intended to be a national unity movement above party politics, it was, in fact, led by the conservative, Catholic-oriented Christian Social Party. Subsequent laws, which outlawed all political parties, may have temporarily silenced the National Socialists, but they also alienated a substantial portion of Austria's electorate that had supported the Social Democrats.
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References
1 Armin Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt: Filmproduktion und Filmpolitik in Österreich 1930–1938 (Trier, 1992), 31.
2 In 1926 the Social Democratic government of Vienna had established its own film association, the Kinobetriebsgesellschaft, known as Kiba. In addition to its attempt to improve the film industry along Socialist lines, Kiba produced and distributed films and became one of the major cinema-theater owners in the city.
3 Der gute Film 56 (1933): 1. All translations are by the author.
4 Between 1934 and 1938, a total of 265 U.S. and 70 German films received Category III and IV ratings, while only 20 French, 20 British, 9 Czechoslovakian, and 6 Austrian films were given these ratings. See Hubert Mock, Aspekte Austrofaschistischer Film- und Kinopolitik (Vienna, 1986), 122.
5 UFA was created as a government-owned studio in Berlin in 1917 for the express purpose of producing World War I propaganda films and public service shorts. It rose to become a world force in cinema as a private studio during the Weimar Republic.
6 Among them: Dreyfus (Germany, 1930); Der Hauptmann von Köpenick and Die letzten Tage vor dem Weltbrand (Germany, 1931).
7 Armin Loacker and Martin Prucha, “Die Unabhängige deutschsprachige Filmproduktion in Österreich, Ungarn und der Tschechoslowakei,” in Unerwünschtes Kino: Der deutschsprachige Emigrantenfilm 1934–1937, ed. Armin Loacker and Martin Prucha (Vienna, 2000), 57.
8 Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 142.
9 Ibid., 144. Prior to his escape from Austria in the wake of the German annexation, Oswald made one more film, again with singer Joseph Schmidt, Heut’ ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben (1936), featuring Felix Bressart, who would also leave Austria to become one of Hollywood's most prolific character actors. Oswald, however, found little artistic opportunity in Hollywood.
10 Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 150–51.
11 Walter Reisch directed one more film prior to his Hollywood emigration, the 1936 Silhouetten, which is set in the world of ballet and featured his wife Lisl Handl. Reisch left Vienna in 1936 and that same year directed the film Men Are Not Gods in London prior to his arrival in Hollywood.
12 See Gerhard Renner, “Der Anschluss der österreichischen Filmindustrie seit 1934,” in Die veruntreute Wahrheit. Hitlers Propagandisten in Österreich 1938, ed. Oliver Rathkolb, Wolfgang Duchkowitsch, and Fritz Hausjell (Salzburg, 1988).
13 Filmemigration aus Nazideutschland, West German Television Broadcast, directed by Günter Peter Straschek, 1975.
14 Nancy M. Wingfield points out that “until the middle of 1931, about one-third of all German sound films were also produced in foreign languages, primarily English and French.” “When Film Became National: ‘Talkies’ and the Anti-German Demonstrations of 1930 in Prague.” Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998): 117.
15 Unlike subtitles, these were texts relating the story or dialogue in the desired language (often with changes to suit local culture) inserted during scenes like title cards in silent film.
16 Wingfield, “When Film Became National,” 131. See also Central European Observer, 3 October 1930, 354.
17 Ibid., 130–31.
18 Ibid. See also Central European Observer, 3 October 1930, 354.
19 Karl Leiter and Walter Reisch's silent Seine Hoheit, der Eintänzer (Austria, 1926), Fred Sauer's silent Erzherzog Otto und das Wäschermädl (Austria, 1930), and Max Neufeld's Purpur und Waschblau (Austria, 1931) are examples. See also Wingfield, “When Film Became National,” 131–32.
20 David Frey, “Just What Is Hungarian? Concepts of National Identity in the Hungarian Film Industry. 1931–1944,” in Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe, ed. Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit (New York, 2005) 204–5.
21 Ibid., 206.
22 Ibid., 207.
23 Ibid., 208–9.
24 Critics saw the nationalist demand for a “Christian Hungarian” cinema as damaging to Hungary's image abroad and to its economic interests. Following Austria's annexation in 1938, Hungary's nationalists triumphed by creating a film chamber based on the one in Nazi Germany and by expelling Jews from the motion picture industry. Hungary's previous difficulty in creating a quality national(ist) cinema was blamed on Jewish and foreign talent. What resulted was an increase in the typical cliché-ridden historical films and Hungarian-style Heimatfilm, and a simple reworking of the genres that had earlier been derided as “Jewish” and too urban/cosmopolitan into countrified settings. See ibid., 211–14.
25 Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 168.
26 Loacker and Prucha, “Die unabhängige deutschsprachige Filmproduktion in Österreich, Ungarn und der Tschechoslowakei,” 29.
27 Czechoslovakia voted it the Best Foreign Film of 1936. See ibid., 189. In Austria, its entertaining and metaphoric statement on the construct of appropriate Austrian sociocultural identity earned the film a prestigious Category I (see earlier discussion of ratings) rating from the Filmkultur Institute and the additional official attribute, “für Schülervorstellungen geeignet” (appropriate for school or student screenings) from the Ministry of Education. Der gute Film 172/73 (1936): 6–7.
28 In a 1936 letter to the Austrian Film Conference requesting permission to work in the mainstream film industry (on films bound for German distribution), Neufeld relates that he departed Germany in 1933 because of his “non-Aryan” status: “Ich bin mütterlicherseits rein arisch, Vater konfessionslos, Grosseltern mosaisch” [I am purely Aryan on the maternal side. Father has no religion, grandparents are Jewish]. The German film authorities found no reason to alter the ban they had issued while he was in Germany. See Neufeld's letters reproduced in Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 160–62.
29 On the Hollywood interest in entertainment films from the Austrofascist era and the dashed attempt to create a Hollywood-Viennese coproduction cinema in 1936–37, see Chapter 2 in Robert von Dassanowsky, Austrian Cinema: A History (Jefferson, NC, 2005).
30 Russell A. Berman, Modern Culture and Critical Theory: Art, Politics, and the Legacy of the Frankfurt School (Madison, WI, 1989), 231–41.
31 The extensive social reforms undertaken by the Social Democratic Party in Vienna during the First Republic, which included the construction of pioneering and influential worker's housing, gained the city the moniker “Red Vienna.”
32 Linda Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, 1996) 150.
33 Jochen Schmidt, Die Geschichte des Genie-Gedankens in der deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Politik 1750–1945, 2 vols. (Darmstadt, 1985), 2:202.
34 Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, 167.
35 Ibid., 150.
36 Ibid., 162.
37 For an analysis of Sagan's film and discussion of her unique production mode, see my article “Male Sites/Female Visions: Four Female Austrian Film Pioneers,” Modern Austrian Literature 32, no. 1 (1999): 126–40.
38 Mozart composed Bastien und Bastienne, K. 50/46b, his first German-language singspiel, in 1768 at age twelve.
39 See Robert von Dassanowsky, “An Unclaimed Country: The Austrian Image in American Film and the Sociopolitics of The Sound of Music,” in Bright Lights Film Journal 41 (2003) online http://brightlightsfilm.com/41/soundofmusic.htm (accessed 11 March 2007).
40 See Robert von Dassanowsky, “Der Einfluß Arnold Fanck und Leni Riefenstahl im zeitgenössischen amerikanischen Film,” in Der BergFILM 1920–1940, ed. Friedbert Aspetsberger (Innsbruck, 2002), 113–24.
41 Austria had nothing to compete with Hitler's plans to expand the Weimar Republic's Autobahn concept into a wide network that would theoretically link the nation with easy access. Nevertheless, the Schuschnigg regime touted the Grossglockner Highway and the Höhenstrasse, which connected Vienna with the top of the Kahlenberg, a popular resort area that overlooked the city, as substantial achievements. The unemployed built these two major roads in a work program that has not escaped accusations of forced labor, although it had strong similarities to contemporary New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects in the United States. See also Georg Rigele, Die Grossglockner-Hochalpenstrasse. Zur Geschichte eines österreichischen Monuments (Vienna, 1998).
42 Der gute Film 172/73 (1936): 6–7.
43 “Kardinal Innitzer sieht ‘Singende Jugend’,” Neue Freie Presse, Tuesday, 7 April 1936, 7; “Singende Jugend,” Neues Wiener Tageblatt, 7 April 1936, 12. The Neues Wiener Journal did not run this press release but advertised the following day that it is the first film to utilize the Grossglockner Highway and its surrounding area as “background for a film.” “Morgen: ‘Singende Jugend’,” Neues Wiener Journal, 8 April 1936, 11.
44 “Singende Jugend,” Neue Freie Presse, 12 April 1936, 25.
45 “Der Film. ‘Singende Jugend’,” Neues Wiener Tageblatt, 12 April 1936, 20.
46 Ibid. The reviewer comments that a visit to the studio revealed that the youth is the “fourteen-year-old Martin Lojda.”
47 Ibid.
48 “Der neue Film. ‘Singende Jugend’,” Neues Wiener Journal, 16 April 1936, 13.
49 Der Wiener Film. Zentralorgan der österreichischen Filmproduktion 4 (1936): 4.
50 Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 191.
51 Loacker reports that American film representation, which had been down by 6 percent in 1936, had fallen to 39 percent the following year, with German film up by 36.6 percent. See ibid., 97.
52 See Der Wiener Film: Zentralorgan der österreichischen Filmproduktion 8–10 (1937).
53 These included Hermann Kosterlitz's Katherina, die Letzte (Austria,1936), a class-conflict comedy with Franziska Gaal and “Aryanized” film leading man Hans Holt; Robert Wohlmuth's Fräulein Lilli (Austria, 1936), a high society/crime comedy with Hans Jaray and Franziska Gaal; Richard Oswald's Heut’ ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben (Austria, 1936), a musical with opera singer Josef Schmidt and comedians Felix Bressart and Otto Wallburg; Fritz Schulz's Austrian-Swedish coproduction, Rendezvous in Paradies (Austria-Sweden, 1936), a romantic musical comedy that was only released in Sweden; Walter Reisch's final Austrian film, Silhouetten (Austria, 1936); Bela Gaal's Der kleine Kavalier (or Bubi) (Hungary-Austria, 1937), a comedy vehicle for child star Mircha with Szőke Szakáll and Otto Wallburg; Johann Vaszary's Hungarian-Austrian coproduction of 3:1 für Liebe (1937 [released in January 1938], Hungary-Austria), a modernized version of Paul Abraham's operetta Die entführte Braut with Rosy Barsony and Hans Holt; and Stefan Szekely's Hochzeitsreise zu 50% (Hungary, 1937), a screwball comedy with Irene Agay.
54 The film was considered a model of cost-cutting independent production by using a text in the public domain, establishing a short photography schedule with limited studio use, and including actual local festivals instead of costly mass scenes. Distribution agreements were concluded with several countries during the filming, a procedure that has become the standard for contemporary European and American film production. See Der Wiener Film 37 (1937): 3. Anti-Semitic protests (aimed at codirector Jakob Fleck and some of the cast and crew) greeted the film's screenings in Austria. These protests hindered its full commercial possibilities, but the film managed impressive box-office returns in Vienna. See Österreichische Film-Zeitung: Das Organ der österreichischen Filmindustrie 2 (1938): 1; Loacker, Anschluss im 3/4–Takt, 219. Regarding Louise Kolm-Fleck as female film pioneer and her Austrian patriotism, see Robert von Dassanowsky, “Louise Kolm-Fleck,” Senses of Cinema Great Directors (2004) online http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/kolm_fleck.html (accessed 11 March 2007).
55 Kulturkampf was an anti-Catholic secularization program of the German Empire promoted by Chancellor Bismarck between 1871 and 1877. It sought to strengthen the power of the state and Protestantism, and to Germanize the empire's Polish-speaking territories.
56 Der gute Film 227 (1937): 13–14.