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Press Information May | June 2016

From the permissive Pre-Code Cinema of the early , whose disdain for prevalent “moral standards” led to rigid self-censorship in the US film industry, to Paul Verhoeven ’s basic instincts : in the May-June program, the Film Museum presents two instances of cinema as a subversive art – where the breach of taboo is a necessary condition for realism in entertainment.

Further programs in May and June focus on the films of , Ludwig Wüst and Pablo Larraín – as well as on the Austrian historian Siegfried Mattl (1954-2015): his writings on film and history are gathered in a new FilmmuseumSynema publication.

Sex and the City Warner Bros. before the Code

In a famous scene from the pioneering film (1931), over the breakfast table, shoves half a grapefruit into the face of his girlfriend in order to shut her up; in the classic musical , presents a breathtaking arrangement of dancers scantily “clad” in coins, countering the Depression with the lilting refrain “We're in the money” ; in the overwhelming social drama (1933), hundreds of youths turned hobos by the economic crisis go into battle with the police; it takes to execute Edward G. Robinson on the electric chair and a frenzied 70 minute flashback for the eponymous film (1932) to disclose the entire tragedy of a life derailed by murder; in the scandalously cynical Baby Face (1933), the camera repeatedly climbs up the stories of an office skyscraper: an unprecedented metaphor for the rise of 's hardened social climber, „screwing her way to a fortune“ (Richard Corliss).

Five model images of the staggeringly dynamic, stirringly political and sexually provocative cinema of the early sound era in American movies which marks an absolute apogee in film history. From 1931 to 1934, while the unceasing economic crisis threatened to paralyze U.S. society, current social anxieties and urban upheavals erupted in energetic entertainments of unrivaled gall and vigor. Spearheaded by Warner Bros. with its “make it snappy” mode of production, many film producers placed their bets on an art of rousing condensation: in 60-80 minutes, these quick, brazen films rush through epic stories, the likes of which would take hours (if not whole TV mini-series) today.

The historical moment of Pre-Code Cinema owes its moniker to the so-called Production Code, a moralizing system of self-censorship enforced by the major studios from the summer of 1934 to put a swift end to the freedoms of the preceding years. The particularly objectionable films were put on ice, actively “forgotten” or even retroactively censored. However, in the last quarter- century this era has been rediscovered and recognized as a true cabinet of wonders : ever since, those in the know have been aware that the keyword pre-Code (almost as much as the popular sobriquet ) stands for a special kind of magic – an exhilarating directness in cinematic storytelling and acting that often overshadows the subsequent, properly regulated “Golden Age” of the Hollywood studio system.

The extensive 1996 retrospective organized by the Austrian Film Museum and the Viennale was the first presentation of Pre-Code Cinema in Europe. However, in the canon of film history, it remains (at least in our parts) relatively underrepresented. Therefore, over the next 18 months, a multipart Film Museum project will once again shine a light on the riches of this bloom.

No longer beset by the rigidity and relative clunkiness of early sound cinema, these films burst into movement, speech and music in ways that are intrinsically tied to life in the metropolis. Translating the possibilities of popular music and the human voice into ambiguous choreographies and dialogue duels, they also speak up about social crises and injustices of the Depression era – like catchy headlines still dripping with printing ink. And they are chock-full with characters and deeds that cannot easily be designated as either “good” or “bad”: hustlers and cynical lawyers; brash journalists, PR agents and entertainers; and “gold-digging” ladies purposefully using their intelligence and sexuality to overcome social barriers.

During the early 1930s, genres such as the gangster and prison film, the romantic comedy, the horror film and the musical came into their own. But there are also several important pre-Code films that reach beyond the confines of genre. Planting social and political commentary about current conditions in the U.S. right in the middle of the entertainment industry, these works often seem bewildered, oscillating in all directions, unable to make up their mind – the most famous case being Heroes for Sale , a harrowing tragedy of war returnees. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang , a stirring exposé of the penal system in the South, incarnates another tendency: the notion that popular cinema, in the guise of genre, can directly effectuate political change.

All of the above-mentioned films and all those included in the retrospective were produced by Warner Bros., the studio that epitomized the “cinematic spirit of the time.” With their outstanding narrative drive, their smart, “authentic”, erotically charged protagonists and their insistence on topicality and urban realism, they give us the most pleasurable record of U.S. mentality in the transition from Hoover’s to Roosevelt’s era. Unlike at Paramount or Fox, those setting the tone at Warner Bros. (under the guidance of production chief Darryl F. Zanuck ) were not the individualistically sensitive “” makers, but the self-confident tough guys, delivering 5 to 6 films of an unusually high standard to the cinema per year – social issues always in their sights: William A. Wellman, Mervyn LeRoy, , as well as emigrés like and William Dieterle – and, naturally, Busby Berkeley , whose spectacular cinematic choreographies opened whole new worlds to the musical.

Actors under contract to the studio were just as important for the Warner style – especially James Cagney, demonstrating enormous vitality and quick-wittedness in ten films of the retrospective. Further stars from the pre-Code Warner forge include Barbara Stanwyck, , , and Edward G. Robinson, surrounded by equally distinctive (if practically forgotten) performers such as , , Lee Tracy – and that one-of-a-kind master of cheerful salaciousness who best embodies the era: , the King of Pre-Code.

The retrospective presents 38 films. Along with Warner Bros. Austria, the Film Museum’s main collaborator in this project is the . Thanks to the enormous restoration efforts of our Washington colleagues, many pivotal works of the era are once again available in their original pre-Code versions.

May 6 to June 19, 2016

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Premiere heimatfilm by Ludwig Wüst and El Club by Pablo Larraín heimatfilm (2016) sums up 18 years of Bavarian-Austrian filmmaker Ludwig Wüst’s guerilla cinema: “The family album opens, letters are written to the dead and the disappeared. Images of the siblings, the mother and the extended family create room for the more remote, fictitious figures who set similar questions in motion: the quest for one’s identity, the missing sense of belonging and the redefinition inevitably take imaginary paths.” (Dominik Kamalzadeh & Michael Pekler, Der Standard ). On May 18 , The Film Museum will host the Viennese premiere of Wüst’s fascinating heimatfilm, first shown at the Diagonale in Graz.

El Club is another special kind of “Heimatfilm”, celebrated at the 2015 Berlinale – and still without theatrical release in Austria. Chilean director Pablo Larraín has already gouged deep into the more recent history of his country with Tony Manero (2008) and the Oscar-nominated No (2012). El Club , to be shown on June 9 , is set around a remote house on the stormy northern coast of Chile, where Catholic priests found guilty of pedophilia and other crimes have been banished to. “Not since Polanski’s Cul-de-Sac or Tarkovsky’s Stalker has desolation looked as mighty or as chastening. Even in that dankness, though, the film’s compassion is strongly felt, its mordant humor glinting like a blade.” (Ryan Gilbey, The Guardian ) May 18 and June 9, 2016

In Person: Bill Plympton

“I could do a minute of a day, so theoretically, I could do a film in three months without any interruption,” claims Bill Plympton, born in Portland, Oregon in 1946. His animated film oeuvre, stretching from the late ’70s to the present day, seems to prove him right: countless shorts, among them cult classics such as 25 Ways to Stop Smoking (1989), the Oscar-nominated Guard Dog (2004) and couch gags for (2012–16), stand alongside seven hand-drawn, for the most part independently produced, feature films, as well as commissioned works for Madonna and Kanye West, MTV, and Volkswagen.

At 14 years of age, Plympton sent his debut to Disney. While he was turned down and reprimanded due to his age, many years later he was offered to work on Aladdin . This time it was Plympton’s turn to refuse: out of concern for his independence. “We don't need any more children's stories,” says another of his premises (not coincidentally, Plympton’s work can be considered an important inspiration for The Simpsons and Family Guy ). His films are politically incorrect, filthy, brutal – and yet characterized by a tender love for detail. They provide us with bizarre, “forbidden” fantasy images and rough pieces of life advice, without ever missing their actual goal: making us laugh with the sweep of his lines. Throughout these 40 years, his style has often changed but, as is the case with the coarseness of his settings and subjets, always remaining recognizable as “true Plympton” at the core.

After David OReilly and Don Hertzfeldt, whose works were presented in a joint effort of the Film Museum and VIS Vienna Independent Shorts, their role model Bill Plympton will now be the guest of the Film Museum and the VIS. The program will give insight into his short and feature film work, ending with a masterclass. May 26 to 28, 2016

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The Radiance of a City: An Evening for Siegfried Mattl

Siegfried Mattl (1954–2015) was one of the Austria’s most renowned contemporary historians and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society. And he was a cinephile: films in all their variety presented him with new approaches in the study of the dynamics of urban experience and historical reality. Mattl’s writings on film and history have now been gathered in a new volume in the FilmmuseumSynemaPublikationen , published under the title The Radiance of a City . With humour and a critical eye cast on power relations, these texts explore the full spectrum of colours in cinema – from Red Vienna to Haneke’s white to the cinematic blues of Bob Dylan . From Austrian comedies of the interwar period to the pointed re-evaluation of avant- garde, amateur and other ephemeral films to the staging of history as enacted by Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott or Todd Haynes. The book launch on June 1 will bring together a number of films Mattl was engaging with as well as many of his friends and colleagues. Drehli Robnik, editor of the new book and Mattl’s longstanding comrade-in-arms, will be moderating: film fragments, text excerpts, reminiscences.

June 1, 2016

Paul Verhoeven

Here’s a piece of instruction often heard on Paul Verhoeven’s film sets: “Can you do it faster? Don’t drag!” The director, born in Amsterdam in 1938, works like a compressor: he places pressure on situations and characters in order to unquestionably expose power relations, both on the small and large scale. This excess of visualization, not least in the form of shock montages, can be regarded as an essential signature of his cinema. It could have something to do with the fact that Verhoeven himself experienced social pressure while studying in the Dutch city of Leiden, at one of the nation’s oldest and most conservative universities, where he earned a doctorate in mathematics in 1964. These constraints fueled his desire for provocation along with his penchant for the surreal : his breaches of taboo always spring from a precise knowledge of social norms.

Verhoeven’s 14 feature films made since 1971 (to be joined this year by a 15th title, Elle with Isabelle Huppert) implicitly revolve around the following question: where – between genre and experiment, entertainment and subversion, commercialism and obsession – can an artist working with film find his place? In Verhoeven’s case, the boundaries and opportunities of the politique des auteurs prove even less clearly identifiable than usual, since his oeuvre is divided into two worlds: the traditions of European philosophy, art and film (existentialism, Dutch painting, surrealism) – and Hollywood , a culture industry with enormous possibilities and enormously limiting parameters.

Never ceasing to challenge moral and technical boundaries in both worlds, Verhoeven has taken on the Establishment, sponsors and censorship boards, and even the counterculture (where his films have regularly been accused of perversion, misogyny, homophobia, fascism – or everything at once). Just like his often quoted “director of reference”, , he is driven to arrange mainstream narratives as subversively as possible: there is hardly a single image in his

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films without ambiguity, irony, or a sense of doom to it . Another film lurks behind each film, just as sharp splinters of authorial intervention lie in wait at each turn of the generic road.

Already in Turkish Delight (1973), starring Rutger Hauer as an alter ego of the director, we are given to understand that artists in Verhoeven’s cinema are unbalanced, non-conformist beings with almost terrorist inclinations. In The Fourth Man (1983), he brings the topic to a phantasmagoric head, subsequently putting it to the final test in Hollywood, where Basic Instinct (1992) meets with enormous success and Showgirls (1995) becomes a legendary box-office failure. The textures of his cinema, however, remain smooth throughout; if anything, they are even gloomier and campier in his American films than before.

Flesh+Blood (1985) marks the transition between these two production worlds, filmed in Europe with American money. Set against a medieval background, the film tells the story of two warriors battling over a woman, highlighting one of Verhoeven’s favorite themes: the woman as a driving force of events . Flesh+Blood condenses each and every obsession that he will soon carry with him over the Atlantic: the bond between love and death, violence and sexuality; the fluid camerawork; the satirically formulated critique of leader figures , propaganda and the potential for violence in state and clerical institutions. Verhoeven is no stranger to Trojan horses, having already made use of a seemingly straight-out Dutch epic as a means of social critique (Soldier of Orange , focusing on Holland’s role in the Second World War). This practice of “smuggling for the higher good” continued in Hollywood. Science fiction films such as RoboCop and Starship Troopers served him as vehicles for a pointed analysis of (post) Reagan culture.

In the new millenium, Verhoven turned his back on Hollywood (and vice-versa). With Black Book (2006), the story of a Jewish woman struggling for survival in Holland during the Nazi era, several threads from his past intertwine: the collaboration with author Gerard Soeteman, the genre intensity of his U.S. years and the social critique of his Dutch films come to intertwine. Above all, through daring images and a strong commitment to his protagonist, Verhoeven finds a fresh approach to his old favorite subject – the use of the body and sexuality as modes of survival vis-a- vis a machinery of repression and exploitation.

The retrospective presents all 14 features directed by Paul Verhoeven. It will be accompanied by a lecture on his “hyperbolic” cinema, given by Alejandro Bachmann and Matthias Wittmann. June 3 to 19, 2016

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

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Film Selection: Sex and the City. Warner Bros. before the Code

The Public Enemy 1931, William A. Wellman I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 1932, Mervyn LeRoy Other Men’s Women 1931, William A. Wellman 42 nd Street 1933, Busby Berkeley & 1931, William A. Wellman Gold Diggers of 1933 1933, Busby Berkeley & M. LeRoy 1931, Roy Del Ruth 1933, Busby Berkeley & Lloyd Bacon Smart Money 1931, Alfred E. Green 1933, Lloyd Bacon Little Caesar 1931, Mervyn LeRoy Female 1933, Michael Curtiz 1931, Mervyn LeRoy 20,000 Years in Sing Sing 1933, Michael Curtiz The Match King 1932, William Keighley & H. Bretherton Employees’ Entrance 1933, Roy Del Ruth The Strange Love of Molly Louvain 1932, Michael Curtiz 1933, Roy Del Ruth 1932, Roy Del Ruth Lady Killer 1933, Roy Del Ruth 1932, Roy Del Ruth Ex-Lady 1933, Taxi! 1932, Roy Del Ruth Baby Face 1933, Alfred E. Green Jewel Robbery 1932, William Dieterle Hard to Handle 1933, Mervyn LeRoy One Way Passage 1932, Tay Garnett Wild Boys of the Road 1933, William A. Wellman Union Depot 1932, Alfred E. Green Heroes for Sale 1933, William A. Wellman The Mouthpiece 1932, Elliott Nugent & James Flood Jimmy the Gent 1934, Michael Curtiz High Pressure 1932, Mervyn LeRoy I’ve Got Your Number 1934, Ray Enright Three on a Match 1932, Mervyn LeRoy Grand Slam 1934, William Dieterle Two Seconds 1932, Mervyn LeRoy A Modern Hero 1934, G.W. Pabst

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