Overview

Considers over sixty Hollywood films set in Austria, examining the film industry, the influence of domestic factors on images of a foreign country, and the persistence of cliches. Maria von Trapp, watching the final scene of The Sound of Music for the first time as ""her"" family escaped into Switzerland, exclaimed, ""Don't they know geography in Hollywood? Salzburg does not border on Switzerland!"" Hadshe thought about the beginning of the film, which transports viewers to ""Salzburg, Austria in the last Golden Days of the Thirties,"" when the country was in fact suffering from extreme political and social unrest, she might haveasked, ""Don't they know history either?"" In The Sound of Music as well as in Hollywood's many other ""Austria"" films, the projections on the screen resemble reflections in a funhouse mirror. Elements of a ""real"" place with a""real"" history inhabited by ""real"" people can be found in the fractured distortions, which have both drawn from and contributed to the general public's perceptions of the country and its citizens. Austria Made in Hollywood focuses on films set in an identifiable Austria, examining them through the lenses of the historical contexts on both sides of the Atlantic and the prism of the ever-changing domestic film industry. The study chronicles theprotean screen images of Austria and Austrians that set them apart both from European projections of Austria and from Hollywood incarnations of other European nations and nationals. It explores explicit and implicit cultural commentaries on domestic and foreign issues inserted in the Austrian stories while considering the many, sometimes conflicting forces that shaped the films.

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9781571139450

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Reviews

[W]ould be an excellent addition to a syllabus for a history course on Europe and the United States, or as a country case study for a ?lm course. This is the de?nitive book on the image of Austria and Austrians in American ?lm. . . . An extraordinary achievement . . . . AUSTRIAN HISTORY YEARBOOK [Michael Burri] [Shows how] filmmakers drew on the American fascination with the empire, the aristocracy, the baroque, and classical music to address concerns of the day. . . . Students, teachers, and scholars can all draw on Vansant's focused, concise, and clear narrative, a novel and insightful examination of cinematic treatments of national cultures in historical context. MONATSHEFTE [Alan Lareau] As a rich source of information on often forgotten celluloid depictions of Austria, this book will be of value to scholars of Austria, and its careful readings of shifting Hollywood depictions of a single subject will make it of interest to many film scholars as well. GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW [Ted Dawson] An immensely readable study: it persuasively illustrates how American films about Austria, both during Hollywood's golden age and at the present time, were and will continue to be projections, which often reveal much more about the contemporary concerns and values of the United States than they do about the Austria they are reconstructing on screen. AUSTRIAN STUDIES [F]ills a gap in the history of the great migration of Nazi refugees from Europe to California by concentrating on the image of Austria in commercial products coming out of Hollywood. [Vansant] is most illuminating in her discussion of the generation from Erich von Stroheim to Otto Preminger, including Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder, and Josef von Sternberg. CHOICE

[F]ills a gap in the history of the great migration of Nazi refugees from Europe to California by concentrating on the image of Austria in commercial products coming out of Hollywood. [Vansant] is most illuminating in her discussion of the generation from Erich von Stroheim to Otto Preminger, including Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder, and Josef von Sternberg. CHOICE

Author Information

JACQUELINE VANSANT is Professor Emerita of German at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

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