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

  • Letter from an Unknown Woman

    Max Ophuls
    United States, 1948

    Restored Print

    Thursday, July 7 7 PM

    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.

     

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  • The Third Man

    Carol Reed
    United Kingdom, 1949

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, July 9 6 PM

    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).

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  • The Marriage Circle

    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1924

    Restored Print

    Sunday, July 10 4:30 PM

    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.

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  • The Smiling Lieutenant

    Ernst Lubitsch
    United States, 1931

    Restored Print

    Friday, July 15 6:30 PM

    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).

     

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  • The Blue Angel

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

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

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  • M

    Fritz Lang
    Germany, 1931

    Digital Restoration

    Saturday, July 23 6 PM

    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.

     

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  • Sunset Blvd.

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

    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.

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  • Liebelei

    Max Ophuls
    Germany, 1932

    Archival Print

    Friday, July 29 6:30 PM

    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.

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  • The Third Man

    Carol Reed
    United Kingdom, 1949

    Digital Restoration

    Friday, August 5 6:30 PM

    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).

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  • From Mayerling to Sarajevo

    Max Ophuls
    France, 1940
    Saturday, August 13 6 PM

    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).

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  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt
    United States, 1935

    Archival Print

    Sunday, August 14 3:30 PM

    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.

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  • La ronde

    Max Ophuls
    France, 1950

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Saturday, September 3 5:30 PM

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

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  • Oh...Rosalinda!!

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

    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.

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  • Lola Montez

    Max Ophuls
    France, Germany, 1955

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Saturday, September 10 5:30 PM

    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).

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  • Fear

    Roberto Rossellini
    Germany, Italy, 1955
    Saturday, September 17 6 PM

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

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  • Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King

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

    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."

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  • Fear

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

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

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  • Amadeus

    Milos Forman
    United States, 1984

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Director's Cut!

    Thursday, October 6 7 PM

    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.

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  • Eyes Wide Shut

    Stanley Kubrick
    United States, 1999

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick

    Friday, October 7 7 PM

    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).

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  • The Piano Teacher

    Michael Haneke
    Austria, France, 2001

    BAMPFA Collection Print

    Sunday, October 9 6:45 PM

    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).

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