Miss Lilli is a enjoyable comedy of errors in which Franziska Gaal truly stands out; this was her last film shot in Europe before she emigrated to the United States. Her character, Lilli, is a particularly lively, clever and unconventional young woman. Restored by Filmarchiv Austria and shown on the Filmarchiv On channel.
Das Mädchen vom Pfarrhof was often criticised by the press as a ‘’not very bold’ film that distanced itself too little from the conventions of the Heimatfilms of the time. Yet, despite everything, this feature film by Alfred Lehner works.
In The Priest and the Girl, Gustav Ucicky was not afraid to tackle rather sensitive issues. Yet the film was made in the late 1950s, when there were many “external” restrictions on staging such a story.
Wedding Night in Paradise is an enjoyable musical comedy in which a series of misunderstandings and misadventures enrich a well-written script and a staging whose main goal is to highlight the excellent cast.
Despite being a heavily fictionalised feature film with many flaws, Crown Prince Rudolph’s last Love by Rudolf Jugert works. And it does so with a decidedly simple screenplay, which focuses first and foremost on the essentials without digressions and almost entirely devoid of subplots. Everything foreshadows an impending tragedy. The shadows get the better of the lights. Mary Vetsera’s naive face speaks for itself.
The Trapp Family, while suffering from an overly famous, spectacular and almost ‘cumbersome’ remake, undoubtedly has a well-defined personality. And despite having – obviously – many similarities with The Sound of Music (especially with regard to some of the dialogue), it turns out to be a little gem to be discovered.
An anguished sense of death and claustrophobia pervades Radetzkymarsch, directed by Michael Kehlmann in 1964 and an adaptation of Joseph Roth’s homonymous novel. The Habsburg monarchy, for its part, seems to us like a kind of golden cage. A cage inside which Carl Joseph and his father Franz, the film’s protagonists, are prisoners.
It is not surprising that a feature film like 1. April 2000 (a fine fantapolitical satire directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner) was made precisely in 1952, seven years after the end of the world war and only three years before the Austrian State Treaty by which, among other things, the nation’s neutrality was officially proclaimed.
The Ancestress, by Louise Kolm-Fleck and Jakob Fleck, is a very imperfect film, but nevertheless made with such grace and such a clear gaze that it rightfully ranks as a real gem. An important heritage of Austrian and world filmography.