Visions of Vienna

'Visions of Vienna' explores the cinematic city of Vienna in international filmmaking in order to provide a fresh perspective on the works of canonized auteurs such as Erich von Stroheim, G. W. Pabst, Ernst Lubitsch, and Max Ophüls. By elaborating the intimate connection between their Vienna-set films and an urban experience bound up with the cultural specificity of the city, the book adds a new contribution to the study of Viennese modernity in cinema. It argues that Vienna's common association, on film, with anti-modern imagery of the nostalgic glorification of the Habsburg Myth is directly tied to crucial issues of modernity. Films set in Vienna persistently articulate the experience of displacement due to emigration, changing gender relations and anti-feminism, class distinction, and anti-Semitism. These themes are all tangibly evident in the representations of this city in cinema - despite the ongoing mystification of Vienna as the incarnation of 'waltz dreams' and schmaltz.