Welcome to the last leg of this marathon! There are still plenty of snacks ahead.
Vienna: Documentaries
Documentaries offer a potent, accessible entry point into Vienna’s complex history, often focusing on unresolved issues of memory, the Holocaust’s shadow, and the city’s unique cultural life.
Memory and denial. This foundational film in Austrian documentary history records conversations with Viennese men visiting the sites of former Nazi concentration camps. It is a powerful, difficult work that directly confronts the inadequacy and contradictions of Austrian memory and post-war denial concerning the Holocaust.
Exile and return. One of Beckermann’s earliest and most personal films, it follows the life and work of Jewish writer Franz West, an exile who returns to Vienna but cannot reconcile his past with the city’s present. It captures the unresolved tension of return and the enduring shadow of the Anschluss.
Contemporary social reality. Beckermann’s recent film shifts focus to the diverse, working-class life in the eponymous Vienna district. It offers a contemporary, unvarnished look at social integration, education, and the realities of modern multicultural Vienna, far removed from the Fin-de-Siècle glamour.
Sport, courage, and escape. This documentary tells the inspiring and tragic story of the female Jewish swim team, Hakoah Vienna, whose athletes were stripped of their titles and forced to flee the city after the Nazi takeover. It is a powerful narrative of courage, resilience, and the loss of talent due to persecution.
Art, law, and restitution. This film documents the decades-long legal battle by Maria Altmann (niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a major Jewish patron of Klimt) to reclaim five iconic Gustav Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis. It provides a detailed look at the painful, continuing process of art restitution and the ethical failings of the Austrian state in dealing with its past.
Feminist memory and exile. This documentary explores the lives of several prominent female Jewish artists and intellectuals who were forced into exile from Vienna. It focuses on how gender, artistic identity, and historical trauma intersected in their lives and works.
BBC Documentaries
- BBC: Vienna – City of Dreams – with Joseph Leo Koerner (Eleanor Yule, 2010)
The cultural panorama. Presented by the acclaimed art historian, this series provides a highly visual and engaging exploration of the city’s intellectual and artistic production. It is an excellent general introduction to the ideas, architecture, and psychological undercurrents that defined Vienna as the birthplace of modern thought.
- BBC: Vienna: Empire, Dynasty and Dream. Episode 1: Vienna, the beating heartbeat of Europe; Episode 2: The crafting of music in Vienna; Episode: Vienna in 1908
Historical sweep and focus. This set of episodes offers a detailed, accessible look at the Habsburg dynasty, the evolution of Viennese music from the Classical era to the avant-garde, and a specific focus on the pivotal year 1908, when the city’s creative tension was at its absolute peak.
Vienna: Selected Movies
The following movies are set in Vienna. The Wedding March by Erich von Stroheim is my favorite movie on this list. But there are quite a few famous filmmakers from Vienna: Michael Haneke, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Ulrich Seidl, Erich von Stroheim, Otto Preminger, Josef von Sternberg, Fred Zinnemann, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Peter Kubelka, Axel Corti, Peter Tscherkassky, Martin Arnold, and Ruth Beckermann, among others.
Try to see these movies on an actual big screen. Even in Vienna, there are still some theaters left. But there’s also the Film Museum Wien and the Film Archiv Austria.
The origin story. A film focusing on the early career and intellectual development of Sigmund Freud, highlighting the social and professional obstacles he faced in conservative, late 19th-century Vienna before psychoanalysis took hold.
The romantic myth. This film cemented a new, romanticized image of Vienna for a generation, using the city’s picturesque streets and trams as a backdrop for a spontaneous, philosophical, and highly engaging modern love story.
Post-war paranoia and cynicism. The definitive cinematic depiction of post-war Vienna, shot in stark black-and-white. It captures the atmosphere of moral decay, Allied occupation, and black-market intrigue through its legendary use of the city’s bombed-out ruins and its iconic zither score.
Imperial extravagance and decay. Your favorite on the list, this silent film (originally a two-part epic) is the quintessential Erich von Stroheim work: a lavish, cynical portrayal of the sexual hypocrisy, class snobbery, and decadent militarism of the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Tragedy and memory. A beautiful, melancholic melodrama that uses Vienna’s ornate settings to frame a tragic story of unrequited love and missed chances. Max Ophüls, a master of the sweeping camera movement, perfectly captures the city’s nostalgic, dream-like quality.
Poverty and despair. A German expressionist film (often censored) that provides a stark, realistic look at the economic devastation, moral collapse, and social despair in post-WWI Vienna, exposing the misery behind the polite facades.
Art, contemplation, and the mundane. A meditative, quiet film set primarily within the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It explores the relationship between art, the people who look at it, and the everyday reality of the contemporary city, urging a slower, more contemplative gaze.
Occupation and confusion. This crucial trilogy of TV films depicts the highly confused and ethically fraught period immediately following the end of WWII in Vienna, focusing particularly on the complex, difficult return of Jewish survivors and exiles to a country reluctant to confront its guilt.
Fatal romance. Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s play, this film is another Ophüls masterpiece exploring doomed, romantic entanglements among young officers and bourgeois women in the fin-de-siècle military city, setting a tone of inescapable tragedy and social constraint.
The genius and the city. Though focused on Mozart, the film vividly recreates 18th-century Imperial Vienna, capturing the extravagant musical culture and the tension between the sublime genius and the suffocating court environment.
Repression and violence. Based on Elfriede Jelinek’s novel, this brutally unflinching film is a portrait of severe psychosexual repression and self-mutilation in contemporary Vienna. Haneke uses the city’s high-art music and bourgeoisie as a backdrop for deep psychological sickness.
Female subjectivity and fragmentation. Based on the novel by Ingeborg Bachmann, this visually stunning and difficult film explores the internal life and fragmented consciousness of a female writer in Vienna, blending reality, fantasy, and trauma.
Fantasy and the proletariat. Fritz Lang’s French adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s play (often set in Budapest or Vienna) is a lyrical, fantasy-infused look at working-class life, love, and death, blending melodrama with expressionistic elements.
Espionage and imperial setting. A silent-era spy thriller starring Greta Garbo, this film uses the opulent, secretive atmosphere of Vienna during the Imperial era as the perfect setting for intelligence, betrayal, and romance.
Sexual comedy of manners. An early silent film by Ernst Lubitsch, who perfected the sophisticated, knowing “Lubitsch Touch.” This film is a brilliant example of a Viennese comedy of manners, focused on witty sexual intrigue and marital infidelity.
Another Imperial critique. Another unfinished film by Von Stroheim, this is a dark, sprawling melodrama focusing on a love affair between a count and a carousel girl, providing another complex, cynical portrait of social and sexual stratification in Imperial Vienna.
Politics, self-denial, and espionage. This film chronicles the real-life tragic downfall of Alfred Redl, a gay officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who was blackmailed into espionage. It is a powerful study of sexual and political repression and the corrosive effects of a hierarchical system just before its collapse.
Light musical history. A minor entry in Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, this is a musical biography of Johann Strauss the Younger, using the vibrant sounds of the waltz to evoke the musical exuberance of the 19th-century city.
Mystery and the Fin-de-Siècle fantasy. This fantasy-mystery film uses a fictionalized version of fin-de-siècle Vienna and its social hierarchies as the lush backdrop for magic, political conspiracy, and a forbidden romance.
Contemporary social horror. A highly controversial and raw work by contemporary Viennese director Ulrich Seidl. Shot in a brutally observational style during a summer heatwave, it exposes the banality, aggression, and sexual dysfunction of the contemporary Austrian lower-middle class on the outskirts of Vienna.
Must see in German (without subtitles):
- Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Maximilian Schell, 1979)
The drama of the bourgeoisie. A powerful adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s cynical play, exposing the cruelty, banality, and emerging fascism within the Viennese petty bourgeoisie.
- Die Geträumten (Ruth Beckermann, 2016)
Love and literature across time. A highly innovative, intimate documentary where two young actors read and perform the famous love letters between writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. It explores the connection between literature, Vienna’s painful history, and the emotional resonance of language.
- Eine blassblaue Frauenschrift (Axel Corti, 1984)
Repression and careerism. A tense drama focusing on a successful, cynical Austrian bureaucrat whose comfortable life is challenged by the return of a woman he wronged during the Nazi period, exposing the moral compromises of the post-war generation.
- Herrenjahre (Axel Corti, 1983)
Youth and political disillusionment. A story centered on a young Austrian man’s travels and experiences, reflecting the theme of disillusionment and the search for identity in the aftermath of the Second Republic’s political failures.
- Radetzkymarsch (Axel Corti, 1995)
The novel on screen. A television adaptation of Joseph Roth’s seminal novel, this miniseries is the definitive attempt to bring the entire scope of the Habsburg decline and the complex lives of its military officers to the screen.
Of historic interest:
The repression of reality and the cinematic precursor to denial. Of historic interest only, this recently saved expressionist silent film closely follows Hugo Bettauer’s eponymous novel, presenting a frightening, explicit vision of Vienna expelling its Jewish population. Crucially, however, the film adds a forced “happy ending” to the book, where the Jews are brought back. As noted by critics, this artistic compromise turns the movie into a chilling, prime example of the “Austrian soul’s ability to repress.” This naive and perhaps crude experiment from 1924 can be taken as a forerunner of what was generally practiced after World War II in the country ohne Eigenschaften (“without qualities”), foretelling the historical reality of impending catastrophe and the reluctance to confront it.1
Kitsch and the Imperial myth. Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known to her family as “Sissi,” entered popular culture with this series of three films that started in 1955. The first of the wildly successful trilogy, this film created the dominant, kitsch-laden global myth of Empress Elisabeth. Historical accuracy is not a quality of the film, but as critics have always pointed out, kitsch is. According to Wikipedia, Sissi is one of the most successful German-speaking movies ever made. Its pervasive cultural influence lies precisely in its historical inaccuracy, offering a beautiful, sentimentalized fantasy of the Imperial past that Austrians and Germans eagerly consumed, often as a psychological escape from the post-war reality. Even the lead actress, Romy Schneider, who became synonymous with her role, desperately tried to distance her work from that image. I’d much rather see the original Sissi comedy movie, The King Steps Out (1936), albeit a minor Josef von Sternberg, another famous Viennese in Hollywood.
Freud Movies
The films and documentaries listed here attempt, with varying degrees of success and license, to capture the historical environment, the interpersonal drama, and the profound intellectual impact of Sigmund Freud and his invention of psychoanalysis in Vienna.
(Don’t write me to tell me that there’s a Netflix series out there called nothing less than “Freud” because I can not recommend this production on many grounds, not the least being that it is full of historical inaccuracies.)
The origin story. A film focusing on the early career and intellectual development of Sigmund Freud, specifically highlighting the professional obstacles and personal pressures he faced in the conservative academic and social circles of late 19th-century Vienna before psychoanalysis was established.
The split and the transfer. David Cronenberg’s film focuses on the dramatic intellectual and personal relationship between Freud and Carl Jung, primarily through their shared, complicated clinical relationship with the patient Sabina Spielrein. It captures the high-stakes, internal politics that led to the schism in the early psychoanalytic movement.
The grand Hollywood narrative. This ambitious, highly stylized film from legendary director John Huston attempts to condense the birth of psychoanalysis into a dramatic, sweeping epic. It is notable for its exploration of the early cases (like the study of hysteria) and the film’s strong dramatic tension, though it takes considerable artistic liberties with the historical record.
Fictional meeting of minds. Based on the popular novel by Irvin D. Yalom, this film dramatizes a fictional meeting in Vienna in 1882 between the physician Josef Breuer (Freud’s early colleague) and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It uses historical figures to explore themes of obsession, despair, and the nascent ideas that would give rise to psychoanalysis.
Documentaries
- Sigmund Freud – l’invention de la psychanalyse (Elisabeth Kapnist, 1997)
The authoritative French view. A comprehensive two-part documentary written with the insight of historian Élisabeth Roudinesco. It provides a rigorous, in-depth look at the intellectual and historical development of psychoanalysis, placing it firmly within the socio-political context of Vienna.
- The Century of the Self (Adam Curtis, 2002). BBC documentary
The social legacy. Adam Curtis’s critical BBC series goes beyond Freud’s life, exploring the profound, often unsettling influence of psychoanalytic ideas on mass culture, marketing, political manipulation, and the modern concept of the self throughout the 20th century.
- Sigmund Freud – Auf den Spuren des berühmten Psychoanalytikers (Koschka Hetzer-Molden, 2006). TV documentary approved by the Sigmund Freud Privatstiftung Wien and the Goethe-Institut.
The authorized historical path. This TV documentary, bearing the approval of the Freud Foundation in Vienna, follows the physical and intellectual footsteps of the psychoanalyst, offering a respectful, historically grounded tour of his life and work, particularly within Vienna.
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