Walter Reisch: The Musical Writer

Autor(en)
Claus Tieber
Abstrakt

Academy Award-winning Austrian screenwriter Walter Reisch's (1903-83) career started in Austrian silent cinema and ended in Hollywood. Reisch wrote the screenplays for silent films, many of them based on musical topics (operetta films, biopics of musicians, etc.). He created the so-called Viennese film, a musical subgenre, set in an almost mythological Vienna. In my article I am analysing the characteristics of his writing in which music plays a crucial part. The article details the use of musical devices in his screenplays (his use of music, the influence of musical melodrama, instructions and use of songs and leitmotifs). The article closes with a reading of the final number in the last film he was able to make in Austria: Silhouetten (1936).

Organisation(en)
Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft
Journal
Journal of Screenwriting
Band
10
Seiten
295 - 306
Anzahl der Seiten
12
ISSN
1759-7137
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1386/josc_00005_1
Publikationsdatum
09-2019
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
604011 Filmwissenschaft
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Visual Arts and Performing Arts, Literature and Literary Theory
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/e24b8cc1-7baa-46d2-96be-c22a066ab5f2