Cinema of Austria

Cinema Of Austria

Austria has had an active cinema industry since the early 20th century as the transcultural empire of Austria-Hungary and following 1918 as a republic. Producer Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky, producer-director-writer Luise Kolm and the Austro-Hungarian directors Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda were among the pioneers of early Austrian cinema. Several Austrians pursued a career in Weimar-era Germany and later in the United States, among them Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger.

Between the two world wars, directors like E. W. Emo and Henry Koster - the latter of which had emigrated from Austria, provided examples of Austrian film comedies. At the same time, Willi Forst and Walter Reisch founded the Wiener Film genre. After Austria had become a part of Nazi Germany in 1938, Vienna's Wien-Film production company became an important studio for seemingly unpolitical productions. In the aftermath of World War II, Austria's film production soon restarted, partially supported by the Allied Forces. Veteran and new directors such as Ernst Marischka, Franz Antel, Geza von Cziffra, Geza von Bolvary, and Walter Kolm-Veltee among others, revised the comedy, the provincial Heimatfilm, and biopic tradition, and began a new genre of the opulent imperial epic (e.g. Marischka's Sissi films and Antel's imperial era musicals) which rivaled Hollywood entertainment at the international box office.

The 1950s brought Austria its largest film production boom in its history, but without a neorealist or New Wave school, as had revitalized other European cinemas during this era, and with no national subsidies, the commercial Austrian film industry collapsed by 1968 and experimental film remained very limited. By the 1970s, television had become the medium for entertainment film, the short films of the radical Viennese Actionism movement rejected narrative structure completely, and Austria's alpine landscape as well some of its directors and actors were used for West German sex comedy productions.

With national subsidy arriving in 1981, a new generation of Austrian filmmakers established themselves at home and international festivals in the 1980s and 90s, among them Axel Corti, Niki List, Paul Harather, Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, Stefan Ruzowitzky and Ulrich Seidl. With the new century, Austrian cinema had found its long delayed New Wave and international critical success. Austrian or Austrian-identifying actors who have achieved international success from the 1920s to the present include Erich von Stroheim, Elisabeth Bergner, Joseph Schildkraut, Paul Henreid, Hedy Lamarr, Walter Slezak, Oskar Homolka, Nadja Tiller, Senta Berger, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Maximilian Schell, Maria Schell, Romy Schneider, Oskar Werner, Vanessa Brown, Gusti Huber, Curd Jürgens, Lotte Lenya, Kurt Kasznar, Marisa Mell, Helmut Berger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Christoph Waltz.