1POPULAR CINEMA

maintain its cultural identity only if it overcomes the legacies of decadence,
which in the gendered terms of the operetta invariably means effeminacy.
Likewise, the city’s cultural life can be preserved only if its main protagonist,
the creative man, is confirmed in his discursive and narrative agency.
The figure of the musician offers an ideal vehicle for such a revisionist account
of culture, nation, and identity. Yet its realization hinges always on
the sacrifice by or of a woman.
Operetta takes advantage of the well-tried mixture of musical biography
and costume drama that, since the beginnings of cinema, has sustained the
ongoing triangulation of Vienna, music, and desire. All narrative and visual
elements bear witness to this pervasive eroticization of musical culture,
from the conventional love triangle between the man, the wife, and his
muse to the polemical juxtaposition of art vs. entertainment, and opera vs.
operetta. The story of Franz Jauner (Willi Forst), who comes to the city to
work for the enterprising Marie Geistinger (Maria Holst), follows the typical
stages in the representation of a musical career: struggle, fame, disaster,
and, finally, the rebirth of music in the spirit of personal tragedy. His trials
and tribulations position him between the ambitious woman of the world,
the famous Geistinger, who renounces love for a career on the stage, and a
talented young singer from back home, Emilie Krull (Dora Komar), who
later becomes his wife. It is the women’s role to resolve all conflicts between
power and desire, creativity and sexuality, in favor of the film’s true love
story between the musician and his audience.
Jauner’s search for a new musical form whose combined lyrical and dramatic,
classical and popular, elements could revitalize musical life in the
city takes place on several levels in the narrative: through direct references
to the importance of music to Viennese identity; the various approaches to
the emerging genre of the operetta; and, of course, the staging of these oppositions
in the erotically charged terms of the Jauner-Geistinger relationship.
Challenged by the independent career woman, the young conductor
asserts himself by staging successful productions of Millöcker’s Der Bettelstudent
(The Beggar Student) and Gasparone, as well as of Strauss classics
like Eine Nacht in Venedig (A Night in Venice) and Der Zigeunerbaron (The
Gypsy Baron). Eventually, Jauner’s dependency on the underlying dynamics
of pursuit, seduction, and rejection compromises his dedication to music.
After his sudden dismissal by Geistinger, personal resentment begins
to interfere with his administrative decisions. Jauner’s struggles for public
recognition as the director of the Carltheater, the Hofoper, and the
The Annexation of an Imaginary City 165