Austro-German Melodrama and Its Film Music

For its significant impact onto the post-World War II society in particular and the history of cinema in general, film melodrama has been comprehensively studied in the fields such are film studies and contemporary history. However, a consideration of its audiovisual elements, manifested principally in the film music, has with some notable exceptions been mostly neglected. Our project aims to close this gap and provide the scholarship and the wider audiences with an understanding of representation, as well as constitution of gender, society and history through film melodrama. For this, the project focuses on the Austro-German post- war melodrama features as a primary research object and uses the methodologies from gender studies, film studies and music studies in tracing the representation, narration and emotion in the film music. In the preparatory phase, the project has identified around forty relevant film melodramas with available film- and music materials produced in the 1950s and 1960 in Austria and West Germany. Whereas the creative signatures as well as their number of film directors are quite diverse, the film music composers are represented by Willy Schmidt-Gentner, Anton Profes and Alois Melichar as well as Franz Grothe and Mark Lothar. The main goal of the project is to determine and analyse mediation strategies utilised by film directors and composers. Tracing the notions of media construction mechanisms aimed at the audiences of the Wirtschaftswunder-society is therefore conducted based on the analysis and through the function of music in the post-war German-speaking film melodrama.

The research project investigated the role of film music in German-Austrian melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s. In these films, music was not used merely as a background to create atmosphere, but as a narrative and emotionalizing element. The aim was to explore how this worked in practice and which social notions - for example regarding gender roles - were inscribed in it. For this purpose, musical scores of German and Austrian film melodramas were systematically examined. This included the estates of the composers Werner Eisbrenner, Mark Lothar, Hans-Martin Majewski, Norbert Schultze, and Franz Grothe. With regard to Austrian productions, the estates of Erwin Halletz and Anton Profes as well as the score collections of Alois Melichar, Johannes Fehring, and Willy Schmidt-Gentner were consulted. In the process, material was also identified that had previously been unknown to research. Alongside the score for G. W. Pabst's "Der letzte Akt", which is of significance for Austria's cinematic confrontation with the Nazi past, this particularly included film music by Hanns Eisler for productions of the Vienna Rosenhügel Studios that had long been considered lost. The analysis of these scores showed that German-Austrian film music differed clearly from Hollywood. While in many cases it adhered more closely to classical orchestral traditions, the integration of jazz elements was handled in strikingly idiosyncratic ways - for instance by Werner Eisbrenner, who appropriated jazz harmonics symphonically in such a manner that they were scarcely recognizable as such. The main results of the project have already been published. Particular attention should be drawn to three monographs dealing with highly diverse aspects of the German-Austrian film melodrama: "Die ewige Schlacht. Stalingrad-Rezeption als Überwältigung und Melodram" (2022), "Swingin' Cinema. Die Filmmusik von Johannes Fehring" (2024), and "Kreative Ekstase. Komponisten im filmischen Melodram" (2025). In addition, two volumes will appear in the series "Historisch-kritische Editionen von Filmmusik", making key source material available for the first time. To communicate the results beyond academia, the documentary film "Kino der Gefühle" was also produced. In it, numerous experts explain the significance of film music for culture, identity, gender, memory, and the politics of emotion. The film demonstrates the extraordinary role of film music as a medium that not only reflects society but actively helps to shape it.