Karl Hartl has paid a wonderful tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His Whom the Gods Love – recently restored by Filmarchiv Austria and presented to the audience on the Filmarchiv On channel – still has the remarkable ability to captivate us today, many years after its release, with all its visual and communicative power.
Written and realised mainly for actor Hans Moser, My Daughter lives in Vienna is a brilliant comedy of errors that takes place predominantly in one location, but at the same time features a dynamic and well-thought-out direction.
With The Trial, presented at the 1948 Venice Film Festival, the great Georg Wilhelm Pabst was awarded Best Director and actor Ernst Deutsch won the Volpi Cup for the Best Actor.
In We Invite You to a Dance, the typical Wiener Film elements are all there, and they make up an undoubtedly pleasant and well-written story, although extremely simple and with practically no subplots.
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.
Eroica follows the canons of the Wiener Films, in which elegant costumes and the world of the upper middle class become the main actors. Yet, this important film by Kolm-Veltée shows a marked personality, focuses mainly on the genius of Beethoven and cleverly avoids any possible clichés.
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.