An honourable career and numerous controversies have made Attila Hörbiger’s life comparable to a true novel, although today the actor is remembered mainly for his extraordinary talent and the unforgettable characters he gave us over the years.
Die kluge Marianne is an elegant and funny comedy of errors, a story that might seem anachronistic today, but, at the same time, a true declaration of love to women. A film that, even many years after it was made, is perfectly capable of filling viewers’ hearts with joy and optimism.
Perfectly in line with the Austrian cinema of the time, Freunde stages a sentimental drama, in which, however, there is no reference to the war that had just ended. The story of the three protagonists is set in the 1940s, but could take place in any historical period.
Die Tat des Andreas Harmer is an extremely sophisticated noir, where – just as the great Fritz Lang had shown us in Metropolis in 1926 – the clear separation between good and evil is well represented on two levels by the settings, be they the basement of a building and the sewers of the city or a sunny park on a hot summer’s day.
The Angel with the Trumpet, the successful feature film by Karl Hartl from 1948 and freely adapted from the novel The Vienna Melody, written by Ernst Lothar in 1946, is a family saga and faithful portrait of around sixty years of Austrian history, which successfully mixes the two different points of view – that of Hartl himself, as well as the point of view from the original novel.