sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bunny Lake Is Missing, Daisy Kenyon, Otto Preminger, River of No Return, The 13th Letter, The Narrow Margin

Press Information February 2016

In February, the Austrian Film Museum presents a retrospective dedicated to and his contexts. At the same time, we are pleased to premiere a major archival project in a prominent framework: the Film Museum's new restoration of Robert Beavers' early masterpiece From the Notebook of… (1971) has been selected for the Forum Expanded section of the forthcoming Berlinale (February 11 to 21) – in glorious 35mm. The restoration of From the Notebook of… has been made possible thanks of the support of Markus Schleinzer within the framework of the fundraising project “50 Years of Film Preservation - 50 New Acquisitions”.

Partly Preminger Films by Otto Preminger and others

„Two things are magnificent here: the unique beauty of this country and the unbelievable organization of film production – the consummate silent interlocking of a thousand cogs and gears, technical perfection down to the smallest detail, and all of this without clamor or pathos. The artistic side is more dubious. Only a few here can truly make the films they want. Whether I will belong to them is still to be determined.“ (Otto Preminger, letter to Ferdinand Bruckner, April 23, 1936)

Among the numerous Austrian exiles and émigrés who made film history in Hollywood, Otto Preminger (1905–1986) was one of the best-known – a trademark of sorts . Beginning with the classic Laura (1944), he established himself at 20th Century Fox as a director of complex crime films (Fallen Angel, Whirlpool ) and modernist melodramas such as , an astonishing vehicle, before forming his own independent production company in 1953. This decisive step launched another fruitful phase in his work. Preminger's open opposition to Hollywood's production code led him to search for "relevant", up-to-date topics prone to creating a stir: "I believe strongly that people must have the courage to live in their own period."

Between the mid- and mid-1960s, An Otto Preminger Production was a guarantee of epic ambitions (often based on bestsellers of impressive length). With captivating richness of detail and much-quoted Premingerian "objectivity", (1959) plumbs the depths of a complicated rape trial (questioning the nature of truth and justice in the background), while Exodus examines the founding of the State of , and Advise & Consent delves into the intrigue-laden inner workings of U.S. politics.

The producer-director of these films conducted himself as an image-conscious impresario , taking centre stage as a popular figure whose effect in the media was similar to that of Alfred Hitchcock: both were so famous that they acted as personal guides in the trailers for their films. As his role model, however, Preminger – an anti-Nazi Jewish émigré – chose the Teutonic "man you love to hate" á la Erich von Stroheim: marked by a striking bald head and notorious for his tyrannical traits. With the help of ' brilliant title sequences and film posters, Preminger put together meticulously designed production and publicity packages. At the same time, as a self-proclaimed figurehead of the “new artistic autonomy” in Hollywood, he was a perfect fit for the politique des auteurs , which had begun to change the terms of film critical debate by 1960. The Parisian MacMahonists, for example, declared him one of the "Four Aces" of cinema alongside , and Joseph Losey.

With this film series, the Film Museum proposes another perspective on Preminger's work, reaching beyond the mythical concept of the director-as-auteur – always unmistakably shaping each of "his" industrial products. As with all myths, this is a case of “partly truth and partly fiction.” Instead, we invite viewers to a tour of a house in Hollywood. Some rooms give away more about their owner than others (often literally: the paintings in his films are evidence of Preminger's art collector‘s eye), but all of them are equally characterized by other elements, influences and artistic collaborators.

The 15 selected films directed by Otto Preminger cover the time he spent as a studio employee as well as his later period as an independent producer. (1954), his last Fox-commissioned film after the founding of his production company, serves as a hinge between the two.

These films are molded not just by their director but by certain actors (the most Premingerian being and ) and recurring crew members as well as pop cultural contexts, studio styles and current genre motifs. Preminger's penchant for complicated long takes and the balanced composition of figures in space (converging on an almost programmatic level in Anatomy of a Murder ) is often viewed as a major case of life and art intersecting in auteurist ways: the distanced, objective worldview of a trained lawyer going hand in hand with the artful handling of an ensemble, acquired during his time as a successful stage director and manager of ’s Josefstadt theater. But the development of this aesthetic can also be traced back to cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, Preminger’s important partner on the noirs he made at 20th Century Fox. In the post-classical era, Sam Leavitt's (widescreen) camerawork and Wendell Mayes' scripts proved to be similarly vital contributions.

Akin to looking through the windows of the Preminger house into the neighboring apartments , the program provides each of Preminger's 15 films with a "vis-à-vis", calling for a reappraisal of their qualities not only along the lines of unequivocal "authorship", but also through numerous other familial ties and relationships. From the simple case of remakes ( and ) through production connections (RKO noirs of 1952: Angel Face and The ) to questions of historiography ( Exodus and Israel's pioneer production Hill 24 Doesn't Answer ). From narrative motifs (the "homme fatal" in Fallen Angel and Raw Deal ) through the signature of an actress (Joan Crawford, the “mature, independent woman" of 1945, in Mildred Pierce and Daisy Kenyon, or , the emerging youth of 1960, in Bonjour Tristesse and À bout de souffle , the work of early Preminger admirer Jean-Luc Godard) to the self-reinvention of aging Hollywood greats with small, agile films made in England during the Sixties ( and The Collector ).

February 12 to March 3, 2016

List of selected works

Laura 1944, Otto Preminger Portrait of Jeannie 1948, Fallen Angel 1945, Otto Preminger Raw Deal 1948, Anthony Mann Daisy Kenyon 1947, Otto Preminger Mildred Pierce 1945, Michael Curtiz Whirlpool 1949, Otto Preminger La paura 1954, Roberto Rossellini Where the Sidewalk Ends 1950, Otto Preminger The Offence 1973, Sidney Lumet The 13th Letter 1951, Otto Preminger Le Corbeau 1943, Henri-Georges Clouzot Angel Face 1952, Otto Preminger The Narrow Margin 1952, River of No Return 1954, Otto Preminger Way of a Gaucho 1952, Jacques Tourneur Bonjour Tristesse 1958, Otto Preminger À bout de souffle 1960, Jean-Luc Godard Anatomy of a Murder 1959, Otto Preminger Compulsion 1959, Richard Fleischer Exodus 1960, Otto Preminger Hill 24 Doesn't Answer 1955, Thorold Dickinson Advise & Consent 1962, Otto Preminger The Manchurian Candidate 1962, John Frankenheimer In Harm's Way 1965, Otto Preminger From Here to Eternity 1953, Fred Zinnemann Bunny Lake Is Missing 1965, Otto Preminger The Collector 1965, William Wyler Hurry Sundown 1967, Otto Preminger The Chase 1966, Arthur Penn

For more information and photos, please visit www.filmmuseum.at or contact: Alessandra Thiele, [email protected] , phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 22 Eszter Kondor, [email protected] , phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 12

2