Belvedere film
The Belvedere-Film was a Viennese film production company founded in 1946 . The founders were the experienced 67-year-old filmmaker Emmerich Hanus and the then 22-year-old opera singer and actress Elfi von Dassanowsky as well as the formal managing director August Diglas , as well as other colleagues as financiers. Before the Second World War , there was a short-lived film production company of the same name owned by Count Czernin .
The company was re-established in 1999 with headquarters in Vienna and Los Angeles as a producer of independent short and feature films, many with Austrian themes. Elfi von Dassanowsky acted as co-founder again, this time with her son Robert Dassanowsky .
history
Like Emmerich Hanus , Elfi von Dassanowsky wanted to make more than just individual independent films, or films in collaboration with various Allied powers that controlled the larger production studios in occupied post-war Vienna. Hanus wanted to cultivate a new tradition of acting and technical talent in a new studio that would respect new ideas and also resume the technical perfection of Vienna film.
The first projects were two cultural films: “Symphonie in Salzburg” 1946 and “Die Kunstschätze des Klosterneuburger Stiftes” 1947. These were supposed to represent the reborn Austrian culture and its talents in post-war film art. The first comedy "Die Glücksmühle" was produced in 1947 under the direction of Emmerich Hanus. It was described by the film historian Walter Fritz as "the first rural comedy after 1945". Hanus and Dassanowsky wanted to reinvent this genre as well as the “Wiener Musikkomödie” in order to differentiate it from the Nazi clichés and bring it closer to a new and more intellectual post-war audience.
The Belvedere film brought many old stars back to the screen and also discovered many new ones. Thea Weis , Karl Skraup and Leopold Esterle played in “Die Glücksmühle” . The following comedy “ Who kisses whom? “From 1947 was written for Trude Marlen and Wolf Albach-Retty , who was replaced by the castle actor Alexander Trojan at the beginning of the production. In the comedy “ Der Leberfleck ” (1948) directed by Rudolf Carl, the famous comedians Oskar Sima , Fritz Imhoff and Carl himself stood together again in front of the camera. The then young theater star Oskar Werner was to be persuaded by Elfi von Dassanowsky to enter the film world. But while she and Hanus were looking for a suitable role for him to show his remarkable talents, von Dassanowsky's old employer, the Vienna film director Karl Hartl , hired him in "Angel with the Trumpet", which made him world famous.
But with the then “ Miss Austria ” Nadja Tiller , the young Evelyn Künnecke and the cabaret artist Gunther Philipp , the Belvedere film discovered talents who quickly became established stars in Austrian film . They completed their first film roles in the extravagant musical satire " Märchen vom Glück " (1949), which also brought Maria Holst her "comeback" role and OW Fischer his first and possibly only singer role.
The short film "Semmelweis", released in 2001, received four awards, including in New York , Houston , Parma , and at the Festival of Nations in Austria.
Studios and locations
The special thing about Belvedere-Film, which was founded in 1946, among the many other start-ups of the post-war period, was that it was Austria's first new studio. A self-sustaining institution for the development of talent and productions. The studios and, at the same time, the company's headquarters were housed in the elegant Art Nouveau building at Bauernmarkt 24, which , like the entire Bauernmarkt- Fleischmarkt -viertel, was designed by the Viennese architect Anton Hein in 1913. In the beginning there was a silent film studio on the top floor of the same building. In 1933 the Institute for Sound Film Art was founded there, where, among others, Ernst Lubitsch , Heinz Hanus , Karl Farkas , Artur Berger , Franz Herterich and Hans Theyer taught. In the Vienna Film era it was used as an additional film studio to the Rosenhügel.
In the first few years every possible space in the building, which was damaged in the final years of the war, was used. The window glass and most of the furnishings were missing. As Marielies Füringk wrote in her article about the visit to the studios in an edition of "Mein Film" in 1947, Belvedere-Film soon had offices, sets and costumes, cloakrooms, workrooms for construction and editing, a sound booth and two recording halls, which offered space for medium decoration.
Most of the outdoor shots for the early Heimatfilme were shot in Altaussee . In 1948/49 the large recording halls of the Rosenhügel film studios could be used as a second recording studio. Several of the great technical talents of Wien-Film could be won over to work for the Belvedere-Film. Including the sound engineer Alfred Norkus , the cameraman Sepp Ketterer , the costume designer Gerdago and the costume tailor Ella Bei. Nevertheless, at least half of the technical workforce were beginners, and many of them later became experts, such as Hanns Matula as cameraman and editor .
The former Belvedere studio building, which existed in Austria at the beginning of the film, is now the location of the “CineCenter” cinema. A plaque at the farmers' market commemorates the company and its founders.
Research of lost films
With the help of the Filmarchiv Austria , the Vienna Film Distribution and the German Murnau Foundation , Belvedere-Film is looking for lost productions that were apparently stolen by the Soviet occupation troops in the 1950s after Belvedere-Film had ceased production. Copies of “ Märchen vom Glück ” (renamed “Dream of Happiness” for re-lending) and “Dr. Rosin "can be found in the film archive, and the special collective editing of" Dr. Rosin ”, which is kept in the Augarten film depot , has for some reason lost much of its dialogue.
Productions
The following is a selection of productions by the two Belvedere film companies from 1946 and 1999:
old Belvedere:
- Symphony in Salzburg , 1946
- Art treasures of the Klosterneuburg monastery , 1947
- Die Glücksmühle , Die, 1947
- Who kisses whom , 1947
- The mole , 1948
- Doctor Rosin , 1949
- Fairy Tales of Luck , 1949
- Roulette d'amour , 1969
new Belvedere:
- Semmelweis , 2001
- Wilson Chance , 2005
- The Retreat , 2011
- People , 2012
- Felix Austria! aka The Archduke and Herbert Hinkel , 2013
- De Expressione Humanitatis: From Acting and Music , ORF Documentary, 2014
- Ally Acker's Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women , 2014
- The farmer to Nathal. No film about Thomas Bernhard , 2018
Web links
- Website of the new Belvedere film (English)