Walter Reisch: The musical writer | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 10, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 1759-7137
  • E-ISSN: 1759-7145

Abstract

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: (1936).

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project number P 31422
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/content/journals/10.1386/josc_00005_1
2019-09-01
2024-04-19
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