Wien Film

Wien-Film GmbH ("Vienna Film Limited") was a large Austrian film company, which in 1938 succeeded the Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie AG (Sascha Film Company) and lasted until 1985. Until 1945 the business was owned by the Cautio Trust Company (Cautio Treuhandgesellschaft), a subsidiary of the German Reichsfilmkammer, and was responsible for almost the entire production of films in the territory of the Ostmark, as Austria was called at that time.

The German Anschluss of Austria in 1938 put an end to the country's independent film production. The German-Austrian Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie AG, which had already been sold, under pressure, to the Cautio Trust Company, was transformed on 16 December into Wien-Film.

The new company was officially presented with a new mission statement, signed by Joseph Goebbels: "In competition with the other arts, the purpose of film is to give form to what satisfies human hearts and what makes them shudder, and by the revelation of the eternal, transports them into better worlds." The company's expected propaganda function was thus made unmistakably clear. Jews had been forbidden to work in the Austrian film industry since 1935, as the German Reichsfilmkammer had threatened to ban the import of Austrian films unless the industry kept to German terms.

In the drama films produced by the new company Austrian themes dominated, typified by the standard Viennese light romantic comedy, the Wiener Film, lavish in music, costumes and sets, which mostly portrayed past times in rosy hues. From 1943/44, Wien-Film also made colour films, a privilege previously restricted to the UFA company. Wien-Film also produced cultural films.

Besides the production of dramas and cultural films, Wien-Film concentrated on the management of cinemas. Across Austria, the company owned 14 cinemas in Vienna, Berndorf, Linz, Steyr and Steyrermühl. The Vienna cinemas were the "Scala", the "Apollo", the "Busch" and the "UFA-Ton", which were used for premieres. Wien-Film also ran the cinemas formerly owned by KIBA (Wiener Kinobetriebsanstalt) and UFA, under the newly established Ostmärkische Filmtheater Betriebsgesellschaft m.b.H. ("Ostmark Film Theatre Company Ltd").

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