The men and women who helped shape the look and sound of classical Hollywood were in many cases émigrés, all of them joining an industry built by Jewish immigrants, several of them sharing the same homelands from which this new wave of émigrés was escaping. This series explores the works of those Austrian-born, predominantly Jewish, film artists who made their way to Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, escaping persecution from the Nazi party and rising anti-Semitism in Europe. We open with perhaps the most iconic émigré production of them all, a film about transit papers and escaping Fascism, Casablanca. Directed by Hungarian-born Manó Kertész Kaminer (better known as Michael Curtiz), scored by Austrian-born composer Max Steiner, and starring a pair of screen icons both from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, Paul Henreid and Peter Lorre, the film is presented in a vintage nitrate print courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Directors Max Reinhardt (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Josef von Sternberg (Dishonored), Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd., A Foreign Affair), Fritz Lang (Hangmen Also Die!), Otto Preminger (Whirlpool) and Fred Zinnemann (The Search) offer a range of grand visions, stylish dramas, and black comedies alongside thrilling period pieces from composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and screenwriter Salka Viertel (Queen Christina). This series also showcases lesser-screened gems that feature the talents of exiles in various roles in front of and behind the camera, such as the witty comedy The Girl Downstairs (starring Franciska Gaal), Three-Strip Technicolor fever dream The Garden of Allah (the debut role for Tilly Losch), razor-sharp ensemble drama Hotel Berlin (written by Vicki Baum), and Dorothy Arzner’s big city melodrama Dance, Girl, Dance (also written by Vicki Baum).

This film series is presented in conjunction with the Vienna in Hollywood symposium, co-organized by the Academy Museum, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Austrian Consulate General in Los Angeles.

The Vienna in Hollywood Symposium took place at USC on December 10 and at the Academy Museum on December 11, 2021.

Programmed by Bernardo Rondeau, with thanks to Doris Berger

Notes by Kiva Reardon, Bernardo Rondeau, and Robert Reneau

Vienna in Hollywood

Past Screenings in Series