Cinema
Wienerinnen
Kurt Steinwendner · 1952
Synopsis
Vienna, in the early fifties, far from the guidebook views: stories of women and jealousy, shot in the brickworks, the silos and the districts of the outskirts. Anni, a brickworks labourer, begins an affair with Fritz, the foreman's son, without knowing what links them; other women follow, caught between love and decisions that shape their lives, down to Therese, in the world of the wine taverns.
Context
The film was released in Vienna, at the Haydn-Kino, in February 1952, and in Berlin in July 1953. Its author mixes professional actors with amateurs, shoots in real locations and breaks up the narrative into episodes, on the model of Italian neorealism; the bare bodies and the extramarital affairs made it a scandal. The film had five episodes, of which four survive. Long thought lost, it was reconstructed and presented by the Filmarchiv Austria in Wels in 1989, which led to a rediscovery of the filmmaker.
Who it is for
Four separate stories, the fifth being lost. The title promises a Viennese comedy; it is not one.
Prizes and reception
First feature film by its director, judged on release too dark and too free, and regarded today as a singular work in Austrian cinema.
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