Historical Development
The first films that can be classed as Wiener Filme were created in the 1920s, in the days of the silent film. The genre reached its full potential however with sound film, when the specifically Viennese dialect (see below), verbal dexterity and the characteristically Viennese acid wit (Wiener Schmäh) were able to come into their own and made the genre popular not only in Austria but also in Germany. Willi Forst's production Leise flehen meine Lieder, a biography of Franz Schubert, was so successful that an English-language version was made, under the title Unfinished Symphony. Willi Forst is one of the most significant directors of Wiener Film, and made what is generally reckoned to be the best of the genre, the 1935 film Maskerade.
The success of Wiener Film inspired Berlin to imitate the genre, substituting the Prussian court for that of the Habsburg monarchy and moving the setting from Vienna to Berlin. These films were admittedly also very popular in Germany, but the departure from the milieu of Vienna with its people and characteristic speech resulted in the loss of the distinctive atmosphere of the Austrian originals. A particularly good example is the 1931 UFA operetta Der Kongress tanzt by Erik Charell. On the other hand Max Ophüls demonstrated that Wiener Filme could also be made outside Vienna with his production Liebelei of 1933, in which he displays classic Viennese subject matter, although the film was produced in Berlin, with Willy Eichberger and Magda Schneider as the leads. Ophüls very carefully evoked the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Vienna, while not neglecting to throw into sharp relief the hollow concepts of honour of that period.
During the time of the National Socialist government the popularity of the Wiener Film genre was assured: in almost every way it exactly met the National Socialist requirement for entertaining escapist cinema that distracted attention from reality to a dream world. The Wiener Film thus experienced a lengthening of its heyday, a sort of Late Baroque. Between 1938 and 1945 a few of these films were made with an anti-Semitic, anti-monarchist and anti-democratic undertone, for example E. W. Emo's Wien 1910. Most Wiener Filme however remained, as previously, unpolitical. In a few productions, notably Willi Forst's masterpiece Wiener Blut, there were even some sly digs at National Socialism.
After the end of National Socialism and of World War II many efforts were made to continue the Wiener Film with all its characteristic features. But the best were no more than mediocre, and the majority were simply bad copies of previous successes. The danger of exhausting the possibilities of what was in any case a very finite genre had been recognised by "Dr Volkmar Iro" as early as 1936: "the potential of Austrian film is nowhere near exhausted by the genuine Austrian milieu alone, and it would pose a certain danger for the continued development of the Austrian film industry if the artistic task of the Austrian film were to be regarded as the working over of nothing but Austrian film themes or the Austrian environment. For, as already mentioned, it is not possible with impunity continually to plunder a subject which is in any case limited."
Read more about this topic: Wiener Film
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or development:
“Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody’s mom in that she knows what’s best for us. But if you look at the historical record—Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages—you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)