Film adaptation of a play, Adorable Julia has the good-natured and calm irony of the W.S. Maugham novel on which it is based, with sharp dialogues and a subtle social criticism that is surprisingly topical. At times predictable, it nevertheless manages to give iconic moments, thanks to the voice and above all the thoughts of the protagonist, a very convincing Lili Palmer. In competition at the Cannes Film Festival 1962.
The Vienna of Mann im Schatten is a dark, shadowy Vienna, witness to the most horrific crimes, which, in its time, Carol Reed had so well depicted in The Third Man. And director Arthur Maria Rabenalt was equally able to stage a brutal crime, drawing heavily now from Reed’s own cinema, now from German Expressionism, now even from the legendary figures of detectives like Hercules Poirot or Lieutenant Columbo.
Drawing heavily from American noir films, as well as from the successful French polar films, Torment of the Flesh takes its cue from a series of feature films produced in Austria from the immediate post-war period, in which for the first time – just as had happened in Italy with Neorealism – there was talk of poverty and of the numerous consequences – moral and material – that the war had had on the entire population.
Die Verwundbaren – a unique shocking film in the history of Austrian cinema – is the only directing experience of the painter, set and costume designer Leo Tichat, who has always been fascinated by the Nouvelle Vague, to the point that he wanted to make a feature film that would be completely in line with the principles of the revolutionary French film movement.