here<\/a><\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
Thanks to
\nFilmarchiv Austria.<\/p>\n
xxx<\/pre>\nWIEN-FILM’S TOXIC LEGACY
\n<\/strong>by Brigitte Mayr<\/p>\n![\"Heimkehr_Paula](\"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Heimkehr_Paula-Wessely-Dreharbeiten_Aus-dem-Giftschrank_D25-\u00a9-Filmarchiv-Austria-1067x600-1.jpg\")
Paula Wessely during the filming of Heimkehr by\u00a0Gustav Ucicky \u00a9 Filmarchiv Austria<\/p><\/div>\n
When people talk about the Wien-Film production company, they associate it mainly with operetta bliss, nostalgic melodramas, and lively comedies starring well-known audience favorites. Ignored in this is the toxic cinematic legacy shot mainly in the studios on Rosenh\u00fcgel from the time of Austria\u2019s Anschluss<\/em> until the end of the war under the direct control of the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Joseph Goebbels\u2019s calculated use of film as one of the most important \u201cmeans of mass manipulation\u201d worked like a charm as what people saw in the cinemas, and what continued to be broadcast after visiting the \u201cpicture palaces\u201d was much better suited to controlling value judgements and behavioral norms than open agitation.<\/p>\nPropaganda disguised as petty bourgeois Heurigen kitsch
\n<\/strong>Of the more than 1,200 feature films produced during the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945, around forty, including Jud S\u00fc\u00df, Kolberg, Hitlerjunge Quex, Ohm Kr\u00fcger, and Ich klage an, are still under lock and key or only accessible to a limited extent as \u201cVorbehalt films,\u201d which means that every screening must be accompanied by an expert introduction. Of these films \u201cfrom the Giftschrank,\u201d which literally means \u201cpoison cabinet\u201d we are particularly interested in Wien-Film\u2019s productions during the Nazi era, propaganda works, which although credited to the German market, were actually produced in Austria from 1939 to 1945. Through a variety of measures, such as control of the film industry, compulsory membership in the Reich Chamber of Culture, strict censorship, Aryanization, repression of \u201cnon-Aryan\u201d artists, as well as stringent promotion of individual (\u201cstate\u201d) artists and companies, the \u201costm\u00e4rkische\u201d film industry was installed as a crucial part of the Nazi propaganda apparatus.<\/p>\nWien-Film, which emerged from the Tobis-Sascha film production company in 1938, was presented by a rhombus with a treble clef enclosed within it, as a musical sign programmatically representing its namesake. Wien-Film\u2019s founding guaranteed a viable economic and industrial base from which the material and aesthetics of a genuinely Austrian, or rather Viennese, film culture could be conveyed. Only a few of the fifty productions created during World War II, among them Anton der Letzte, Unsterblicher Walzer, Operette, Der Postmeister, and Schrammeln, are openly propagandistic, such as Heimkehr (1941) with Paula Wessely, which Elfriede Jelinek, who included some of the rabble-rousing dialogue from the film in her play Burgtheater (1985), considers to be the \u201cmost horrific propaganda feature film made by the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The repressed truth
\n<\/strong>With this historical special, we turn attention to the gladly hushed-up propaganda films from the Wien-Film production company in order to scrutinize their production process and style to reveal the perfidious attempts at manipulation through more or less open agitation, and ultimately, classify them correctly. In 1985, in the publication Wien 1945. davor\/danach, filmmaker Bernhard Frankfurter delivered a compelling \u201creckoning with the Wien-Film,\u201d which \u201cblatantly stirred up enthusiasm for the Nazi regime with petty-bourgeois Heurigen kitsch.\u201d With razor-sharp precision, Frankfurter analyzes the exodus of the artistic professionals who were thereby driven out: \u201cAustria\u2019s cinematic annexation had already been progressing rapidly since 1934. Parallel to this restoration and establishment of Nazi-controlled filmmaking, the purge was carried out both directly and indirectly, forcing an enormous number of powerful filmmakers into internal, and above all, actual migration.\u201d<\/p>\nIn post-war Austria, people gladly forgot that Wien-Film was originally an institution founded by the Nazis after the \u201cAnschluss,\u201d which was preceded by expropriations and the obligatory expulsion of Jewish employees. These gaps in memory will be addressed by showing the films, placing them in their historical context, analyzing propagandistic strategies, and discussing them with the audience. With this SYNEMA special, the festival offers space for a visual journey to the dark side of cinema and a response to the difficult task of handling the Nazi film legacy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Curated by SYNEMA
\nBrigitte Mayr, Michael Omasta<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The films: Heimkehr. Wien 1941\/1996 \u2013 Geordnete Leidenschaften VII Institut f\u00fcr Evidenzwissenschaft AT 1996, 5 min Heimkehr Gustav Ucicky DE 1941, 35mm, 96 min Wien 1910 E. W. Emo DE 1943, 35mm, 92 min “Deutschland, erwache!” Erwin Leiser BRD 1968, 89 min All films are presented with an introduction. To the program \u2192 here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-90979","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/90979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.diagonale.at\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Logo_SYNEMA-524x369.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n