Habsburg's Last War: The Filmic Memory (1918 to the Present) ed. by Hannes Leidinger (review)

Since the centennial of the beginning of World War I, there has been a renewed interest in the conflict, both among scholars and the general public. There are many reasons for this new focus—the war was a turning point in the shared history of many countries, shaped the development of Europe and North America in remarkable ways, and directly or indirectly caused the deaths of millions of people. The war also coincided with the early years of commercial film and World War I has been depicted onscreen frequently since the beginning of hostilities in 1914. In Habsburg's Last War, editor Hannes Leidinger has collected a fascinating group of essays examining the ways in which many of the states that arose from the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have depicted the First World War on film.

This text grew out of a research project with the specific aim of examining filmic depictions of World War I made in the successor states of the Habsburg Empire as well as films from other European nation-states, including Germany, Serbia, and Russia. As Günter Bischof notes in the preface, these successor states had many governments and political outlooks in the twentieth century, and these changes had dramatic impacts on artists, in this case coloring the ways in which filmmakers could depict the Habsburg regime. Consequently, the ways in which World War I and the Habsburg Empire have been depicted in the national cinemas of Central Europe have changed dramatically over time.

For scholars of Austria, Karin Moser's essay, "Remembering World War I in 2014," may be the most significant inclusion in this book. Moser notes that Austrian television and filmmakers rarely depicted the war in their productions before the centennial year. This should not surprise observers because the state broadcaster, ORF, is pivotal in funding most film productions in the country and therefore serves as a gatekeeper. As an arm of the post-imperial government, there was little motivation for ORF to examine the war that led to the end of Habsburg rule. Moser suggests that 2014 was a breaking point and that not only have there been more films on the war produced since then, but those films have also rejected the tired myth of Austria as passive victim of other nations' aggressions. She cites multiple recent documentary films that have put forward the now generally accepted idea that Kaiser Franz Joseph sought out war to defend the honor and prestige of Austria-Hungary, as he knew that this was to be a pan-European conflict. This balanced and impassive point of view put forth by documentaries is not shared by the feature films Moser examines. For example, she discusses the German/Austrian/Czech co-production Das Attentat: Sarajevo 1914 (available on Netflix in the United States as Sarajevo). This film presents the aft ermath of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand as a grand conspiracy in the upper echelons of power. Unlike the new documentaries produced for the centennial, this film is certainly meant to evoke and emotional response.

In his postscript, entitled "A Cinema of Liminality," Thomas Ballhausen notes the profound impact of the conflict on interwar film, even those that are not ostensibly about World War I. He notes that The Hands of Orlac, The Cabinet of Caligari, Metropolis, M, and many other films dealt with psychological trauma and, while the origins of this trauma are not explicitly the war, the audiences watching these movies were all living through a time rife with trauma. This observation about the nature of Expressionism is not new, but the reminder that film has always been a reflection of our deepest concerns is welcome.

As a whole, this text is a useful appraisal of the many national cinemas that exist in the post-Habsburg world and how these cultures have examined the events that led to the establishment of their...