Considers over sixty Hollywood films set in Austria, examining the film
industry, the influence of domestic factors on images of a foreign
country, and the persistence of clichés.
Maria von Trapp, watching the final scene of The Sound of Music for the
first time as "her" family escaped into Switzerland, exclaimed, "Don't
they know geography in Hollywood? Salzburg does not border on
Switzerland!" Had she thought about the beginning of the film, which
transports viewers to "Salzburg, Austria in the last Golden Days of the
Thirties," when the country was in fact suffering from extreme political
and social unrest, she might have asked, "Don't they know history
either?" In The Sound of Music as well as in Hollywood's many other
"Austria" films, the projections on the screen resemble reflections in a
funhouse mirror. Elements of a "real" place with a "real" history
inhabited by "real" people can be found in the fractured distortions,
which have both drawn from and contributed to the general public's
perceptions of the country and its citizens.
Austria Made in Hollywood focuses on films set in an identifiable
Austria, examining them through the lenses of the historical contexts on
both sides of the Atlantic and the prism of the ever-changing domestic
film industry. The study chronicles the protean screen images of Austria
and Austrians that set them apart both from European projections of
Austria and from Hollywood incarnations of other European nations and
nationals. It explores explicit and implicit cultural commentaries on
domestic and foreign issues inserted in the Austrian stories while
considering the many, sometimes conflicting forces that shaped the
films.
