Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, 1933–1938 by Robert Dassanowsky (review)

With Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, eminent Austrian film scholar Robert Dassanowsky has shed light on a yet unexplored but very complex and important topic in German-language film of the 1930s. Well known for his important monograph Austrian Cinema: A History (McFarland, 2005), which provided the first comprehensive English-language overview of Austrian film, Dassanowsky focuses in Screening Transcendence on Austrian film in the five years before the Nazi takeover of Austria, during which time Germany was already under Nazi control and Austria was an authoritarian fascist state, though very different in regard to film production given the Austrofascist regime’s acceptance of Jewish actors and filmmakers as well as the lack of an effective centralized government authority shaping Austrian film. Austria provided German-language film with a brief period of freedom, which however was limited by economic considerations, as films that could not be released in the German market were unlikely to make a lot of money. The Austrian film industry in this period was thus split into films that were intended for release in Nazi Germany, primarily out of economic considerations, and which thus fulfilled the racist exclusion and political conformity as required by Goebbels’ propaganda ministry, essentially preempting the so-called Anschluss in Austrian film. More interesting is the other group of Austrian films that did not meet Nazi criteria for release in Germany and had to rely on box office returns in Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other free European countries. It is this latter category of films that provided German exiles and German-speaking Jews an opportunity to continue making films—for some this was a temporary stop on the way into exile in Hollywood.

This well-researched book, which includes an extensive bibliography and index as well as a helpful, detailed chronological filmography, is accessible to both experts and novices. Dassanowsky provides his readers with an expert introduction on the political context of Austrofascism that may be very useful for scholars uninitiated to the topic, while immediately drawing his readers into Austrian film production and examples of the films, some of which is likely to be new material for seasoned Austrianists as well. The book is laid out in three main parts with subchapters. “Part 1: Structures” provides the contextual political background as well as the context of Austrian film production of the time. “Part 2: Genres, Narratives, Contexts,” which makes up three-quarters of the book, provides detailed examples of various film genres and actual films over the course of eight chapters. The topics included in this part deal with Viennese Film as conceived and developed by Willi Forst and Walter Reisch; the Emigrantenfilm and “the Construction of a Catholic-Political Identity”; “Female Types and Sexuality in Feature Films”; “Tales of Patriarchy”; cine-operettas and music film; “New Order Out of Chaos: The Austrian Screwball and Hybrid Comedy”; experimentalism and the question of a national film style; and “the Alps versus Vienna in Film.” The wide variety of topics covered in this part of the book are indicative of the large scope of films made in Austria in this time. The book closes with “Part 3: Locations,” the subtitle of which, “From Rome to Hollywood,” indicates some of the directions that Austrian filmmakers (along with Berlin) were looking at in these five years.

In this short period, Austrian film laid a pathway for many actors to work in American film, such as “Walter Reisch, Franziska Gaal, Hans Jaray, S. Z. Szakall, Felix Bressart, Oskar Karlweis, Felix Jackson, Henry Koster, Joe Pasternak, Hans J. Salter, Richard Oswald, Hans May, Nicholas Brodszky, Albert Bassermann, Steve Szekely, Robert Wilmot” (ix), and thus this book is also an important contribution to better understanding Austrian-American history in film. At the same time, in this period the careers of Austrian actors and filmmakers who would stay under Nazi occupation continued to develop as well. Willi Forst developed a Viennese aesthetic...