A visit last Saturday to a very well presented exhibition on author and playwright
Ödön von Horváth (1901 - 1938) at the Deutsches Theatermuseum in Munich led me to order
Maximilian Schell’s 1979 film adaptation of arguably
Horváth's greatest play,
Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (
Tales from the Vienna Woods).
I had read the play (and other works by
Horváth) with enthusiasm in my late teens, and has also seen the film in the cinema soon after its initial release. Watching it again now, some 30+ years later, was a great pleasure.
Horváth’s text, combining the kitsch and sentimental with a very acid social critique, is excellent (no wonder the author is now considered a “classic”, and is a regular presence on German stages). In a certain way, he’s a sort of Austro-German counterpart to his near contemporary
Federico Garcïa Lorca).
Schell’s adaptation is very engaging, transferring the piece successfully to the screen without betraying its theatrical roots. Some of the acting is also superb, with the curiosity that this was the last appearance of actress
Lil Dagover, who had been in movies since the 1910s and had appeared in classics such as
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).
Unfortunately, this (AFAIK only) transfer to DVD seems destined solely to the German-speaking market. The lack of subtitles in any language (not even in the original) meant that the Viennese accent and idioms required some getting used to for a fluent but non-native German speaker like myself.
