Hanja Daemon Abstract

Shadow Cinema in Post-War Austria

My paper would deal with an Austrian film project that was prominently advertised in Austrian newspapers and film magazines in May 1947 yet remained unmade. Entitled “Tizia” or alternatively “Pingulin”, the film was scheduled for production in Vienna. Reports announced as composer Robert Stolz, a writer of operettas and film music who had just returned to Austria from his US exile. Adolf Wohlbrück, who had voluntarily emigrated to the UK because of the Nazis’ rise to power, was said to star in it together with Franziska Gaal, a Hungarian-born Jewish actress who had been immensely popular in interwar German-language cinema. Was the project halted because the desired stars were not available? Or was it due to the difficult conditions for filmmaking in post-war Austria? While the former aspect might have played a role, there are indications that the lack of electricity and studio space, as well as economic factors, could have been decisive on preventing the project’s coming off the ground. These problems certainly delayed the project’s coming off the ground, according to contemporary sources. The planned film project is exciting in the context of exile studies because actors who had fled the Nazis were slated to appear in it, while in reality few of them returned to the Austrian screen after the war. Using this unmade film project as a case study also serves to shine a light on the post-war Austrian film industry and its various problems, a topic relatively neglected in scholarship. The paper therefore shows what unrealised films can tell us about a nation’s film industry.