Visions of Vienna: Narrating the City in 1920s and 1930s Cinema

Vienna, with its stunning architecture and unforgettable streetscape, has long provided a backdrop for filmmakers. Visions of Vienna offers a close look at how directors such as Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, and Max Ophüls made use of the city, and how the nostalgic glorification of the Habsburg era can be seen as directly tied to crucial issues of modernity. Films set in Vienna, Alexandra Seibel shows, persistently articulate the experience of displacement due to emigration, changing gender relations and anti-feminism, class distinction, and anti-Semitism, themes that run counter to the ongoing mystification of Vienna as the incarnation of waltz dreams and schmaltz.

Alexandra Seibel holds a Ph.D. from New York University in Cinema Studies and is particularly interested in city and cinema, urban modernity and global youth culture. Her publications include Timothy Shary and Alexandra Seibel (eds.): Youth Culture In Global Cinema, Austin: Texas University Press 2007.