Austria Made in Hollywood

Vansant's study is essential reading for students and scholars of film history and criticism, Austrian studies, and intellectual history. . . . It will be an important enhancement to library collections and a key entry on syllabi . . . . -- Felix Tweraser * CONTEMPORARY AUSTRIAN STUDIES *
[Shows how] filmmakers drew on the American fascination with the empire, the aristocracy, the baroque, and classical music to address concerns of the day. . . . Students, teachers, and scholars can all draw on Vansant's focused, concise, and clear narrative, a novel and insightful examination of cinematic treatments of national cultures in historical context. -- Alan Lareau * MONATSHEFTE *
[W]ould be an excellent addition to a syllabus for a history course on Europe and the United States, or as a country case study for a film course. This is the definitive book on the image of Austria and Austrians in American film. . . . An extraordinary achievement . . . . -- Michael Burri * AUSTRIAN HISTORY YEARBOOK *
An immensely readable study: it persuasively illustrates how American films about Austria, both during Hollywood's golden age and at the present time, were and will continue to be projections, which often reveal much more about the contemporary concerns and values of the United States than they do about the Austria they are reconstructing on screen. -- Katya Krylova * AUSTRIAN STUDIES *
As a rich source of information on often forgotten celluloid depictions of Austria, this book will be of value to scholars of Austria, and its careful readings of shifting Hollywood depictions of a single subject will make it of interest to many film scholars as well. -- Ted Dawson * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *
[F]ills a gap in the history of the great migration of Nazi refugees from Europe to California by concentrating on the image of Austria in commercial products coming out of Hollywood. [Vansant] is most illuminating in her discussion of the generation from Erich von Stroheim to Otto Preminger, including Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder, and Josef von Sternberg. * CHOICE *
Vansant's monograph about Hollywood's selection of Austrian topics and themes projected through the lens of the American political and sociohistorical perspective is meticulously researched and thus can serve as an excellent source book for teachers and students of film and literary studies. -- Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger * GERMAN QUARTERLY *
[C]oncise [and] enjoyable to read and may inspire readers to search out films that they are not yet familiar with. It should definitely be of interest to film scholars and could potentially be useful with undergraduates or graduate students. And perhaps it will inspire a contemporary American filmmaker to reexamine Austria. -- Laura A. Detre * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *
For far too long in German research on exile and film, Austria and Austrian-influenced works have been all too liberally integrated into the "German." It is exactly for this reason that Jackie Vansant's study is so important. Embedded in historical context and historically stamped motifs, she not only develops Austrian themes in the film production of Hollywood, but also the reasons for them. -- Ursula Prutsch * ZWISCHENWELT *
Jacqueline Vansant's book . . . offers a unique look at how Hollywood has imagined Austria in its film production. . . . [It] has many strengths [. . . and] will be a useful reference for scholars of European and Hollywood film. -- Jason Doerre * STUDIES IN 20TH AND 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE *