Csárdás in ¾ Time: The Post-Imperial Cinema World in Interwar Austria and Hungary
The Habsburg Monarchy disappeared in 1918, but many elements of its urban culture survived and even continued to evolve in the years to follow. In popular cinema of the interwar period, we can pick up what Nancy Condee has called, in other contexts, an "imperial trace" and begin to map out a common cultural space that continued to bridge the former twin seats of empire, Vienna and Budapest. For this talk, I will focus on three titles -- Frühjahrsparade (1934), Ernte/Die Julika (1936), and Maria Ilona (1939) -- helmed by Géza von Bolváry, one of the most prolific directors of the period.