Vienna and the Movies

July 7–October 9, 2016

The influence of Vienna—an essential cockpit of modernism—on cinema. Includes films by Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, Max Ophuls, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, and more.

 

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  • The Third Man

  • Sunset Blvd.

  • M

  • The Blue Angel

  • Amadeus

  • Fear

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Events

Past Films

  • The Piano Teacher

    • Sunday, October 9 6:45 PM
    Michael Haneke
    Austria, France, 2001

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Isabelle Huppert is a musician driven by dark sexual compulsions in Michael Haneke's scandalous melodrama. "At once an emotional thriller and a domestic horror movie" (LA Weekly).

  • Eyes Wide Shut

    • Friday, October 7 7 PM
    Stanley Kubrick
    United States, 1999

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    In this adaptation of Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, a married couple (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) free fall through a psychological landscape of sexuality and fantasy. “A spellbinder: provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot, and masterfully executed” (Chicago Tribune).

  • Amadeus

    • Thursday, October 6 7 PM
    Milos Forman
    United States, 1984

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Director's Cut!

    Prague stands in for eighteenth-century Vienna in this visually stunning life of Mozart as seen through the eyes of an envious rival. Winner of Academy Awards for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Screenplay, and Sound Design.

  • Fear

    • Saturday, September 17 6 PM
    • Friday, September 23 6:30 PM
    Roberto Rossellini
    Germany, Italy, 1955

    Based on a novella by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, Fear was Rossellini’s last collaboration with his then wife Ingrid Bergman. 

  • Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King

    • Sunday, September 18 4 PM
    Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
    West Germany, 1972

    Twenty-eight chapters from the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria add up to what Syberberg calls “a summary of the Germany of the 19th century as experienced by the Germany of 1972."

  • Lola Montez

    • Saturday, September 10 5:30 PM
    Max Ophuls
    France, Germany, 1955

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Free Prescreening Lecture by David Thomson at 4:30.
    In Max Ophuls’s audacious final film, a life of passion becomes the stuff of carnival. “The ultimate cinephilic object: a color-and-CinemaScope dream” (    Boston Phoenix).

  • Oh...Rosalinda!!

    • Sunday, September 4 5 PM
    Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
    United Kingdom, 1955

    Powell and Pressburger's adapation of Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus is “as light and tart as Viennese pastry” (David Thomson). Set in postwar Vienna and starring Michael Redgrave.

  • La ronde

    • Saturday, September 3 5:30 PM
    Max Ophuls
    France, 1950

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Love's ceaseless roundabout, set in the Vienna of the waltz. “Ophuls displays dazzling technical virtuosity and cinematic elegance” (Chicago Reader).

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    • Sunday, August 14 3:30 PM
    William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt
    United States, 1935

    Archival Print

    Hollywood studio power meets theatrical German Expressionism in this ornate post-Code collaboration between Warner Bros. and Max Reinhardt, starring James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland, and Dick Powell.

  • From Mayerling to Sarajevo

    • Saturday, August 13 6 PM
    Max Ophuls
    France, 1940

    In this neglected masterwork, a historic love affair becomes "a fascinating study of repression and isolation . . . love as a shifting series of masquerades" (Paul Willemen).

  • The Third Man

    • Saturday, July 9 6 PM
    • Friday, August 5 6:30 PM
    Carol Reed
    United Kingdom, 1949

    Digital Restoration

    Joseph Cotten pursues Welles through postwar Vienna in Graham Greene and Carol Reed’s cynical masterpiece. “Seeing it on the big screen is like watching it for the first time" (NY Times).

  • Liebelei

    • Friday, July 29 6:30 PM
    Max Ophuls
    Germany, 1932

    Archival Print

    From Ophuls's early German period, an adaptation of a Schnitzler play about love that outlives life under an oppressive military authority. Set in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

  • Sunset Blvd.

    • Wednesday, July 27 7:30 PM
    Billy Wilder
    United States, 1950

    Introduced by David Thomson
    Fledgling screenwriter William Holden stumbles into the mansion of faded silent-film superstar Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s poison pen letter to Hollywood. Winner of three Academy Awards.

  • M

    • Saturday, July 23 6 PM
    Fritz Lang
    Germany, 1931

    Digital Restoration

    A precursor to American film noir, Fritz Lang’s masterpiece is a terrifying excursion into an urban underworld where it is difficult to distinguish morally between organized crime and law enforcement. Peter Lorre stars.

     

  • The Blue Angel

    • Thursday, July 21 7 PM
    Josef von Sternberg
    Germany, 1930

    Prim professor Emil Jannings is destroyed by his obsession with cabaret singer Marlene Dietrich in the film that launched Dietrich’s screen career.

  • The Smiling Lieutenant

    • Friday, July 15 6:30 PM
    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1931

    Restored Print

    Maurice Chevalier is caught in a tug-of-war between lovely Claudette Colbert and royal Miriam Hopkins. An Oscar-nominated hit, and “a work of nearly total assurance” (James Harvey).

     

  • The Marriage Circle

    • Sunday, July 10 4:30 PM
    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1924

    Restored Print

    Live Music / Judith Rosenberg on piano
    Adolphe Menjou, Marie Prevost, Monte Blue, and Florence Vidor square the circle in Lubitsch’s Vienna-set comedy of marital manners.

  • Letter from an Unknown Woman

    • Thursday, July 7 7 PM
    Max Ophuls
    United States, 1948

    Restored Print

    Introduced by David Thomson
    Joan Fontaine stars as a young woman in love with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdan) in this Ophuls classic set in a turn-of-the-century Vienna of spiral staircases, mirrors, and elaborate grillwork.