Le Petit MacMahon de David Ehrenstein presents … Eyes Wide Schnitzler *

* (restored)

First A Few basic facts:

“Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian laryngologist Johann Schnitzler (1835–1893) and Luise Markbreiter (1838–1911) a daughter of the Viennese doctor Philipp Markbreiter, was born at Praterstrasse 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire (as of 1867, part of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary). His parents were both from Jewish families. In 1879 Schnitzler began studying medicine at the University of Vienna and in 1885 he received his doctorate of medicine. He began work at Vienna’s General Hospital (German: Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien), but ultimately abandoned the practice of medicine in favour of writing.

On 26 August 1903, Schnitzler married Olga Gussmann (1882–1970), a 21-year-old aspiring actress and singer who came from a Jewish middle-class family. They had a son, Heinrich (1902–1982), born on 9 August 1902. In 1909 they had a daughter, Lili, who committed suicide in 1928. The Schnitzlers separated in 1921. Schnitzler died on 21 October 1931, in Vienna, of a brain hemorrhage. In 1938, following the Anschluss, Heinrich went to the United States and did not return to Austria until 1959. He became the father of the Austrian musician and conservationist Michael Schnitzler, born in 1944 in Berkeley, California, who moved to Vienna with his parents in 1959.

Schnitzler’s works were often controversial, both for their frank description of sexuality (in a letter to Schnitzler Sigmund Freud confessed “I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition – although actually as a result of sensitive introspection – everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons”) and for their strong stand against anti-Semitism, represented by works such as his play Professor Bernhardi and his novel Der Weg ins Freie. However, although Schnitzler was himself Jewish, Professor Bernhardi and Fräulein Else are among the few clearly identified Jewish protagonists in his work.

Schnitzler was branded as a pornographer after the release of his play Reigen, in which ten pairs of characters are shown before and after the sexual act, leading and ending with a prostitute. The furore after this play was couched in the strongest anti-semitic terms. Reigen was made into a French language film in 1950 by the German-born director Max Ophüls as La Ronde.”

“The film achieved considerable success in the English-speaking world, with the result that Schnitzler’s play is better known there under its French title. Roger Vadim’s film Circle of Love (1964) and Otto Schenk’s Der Reigen (1973) are also based on the play. More recently, in Fernando Meirelles’ film 360, Schnitzler’s play was provided with a new version, as has been the case with many other TV and film productions.

In the novella Fräulein Else (1924) Schnitzler may be rebutting a contentious critique of the Jewish character by Otto Weininger (1903) by positioning the sexuality of the young female Jewish protagonist. The story, a first-person stream of consciousness narrative by a young aristocratic woman, reveals a moral dilemma that ends in tragedy.

In response to an interviewer who asked Schnitzler what he thought about the critical view that his works all seemed to treat the same subjects, he replied, “I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?” Despite his seriousness of purpose, Schnitzler frequently approaches the bedroom farce in his plays (and had an affair with one of his actresses, Adele Sandrock). Professor Bernhardi, a play about a Jewish doctor who turns away a Catholic priest in order to spare a patient the realization that she is on the point of death, is his only major dramatic work without a sexual theme.

A member of the avant-garde group Young Vienna (Jung Wien), Schnitzler toyed with formal as well as social conventions. With his 1900 short story Lieutenant Gustl, he was the first to write German fiction in stream-of-consciousness narration. The story is an unflattering portrait of its protagonist and of the army’s obsessive code of formal honour. It caused Schnitzler to be stripped of his commission as a reserve officer in the medical corps – something that should be seen against the rising tide of anti-semitism of the time.

He specialized in shorter works like novellas and one-act plays. And in his short stories like “The Green Tie” (“Die grüne Krawatte”) he showed himself to be one of the early masters of microfiction. However he also wrote two full-length novels: Der Weg ins Freie about a talented but not very motivated young composer, a brilliant description of a segment of pre-World War I Viennese society; and the artistically less satisfactory Therese.

In addition to his plays and fiction, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17 until two days before his death. The manuscript, which runs to almost 8,000 pages, is most notable for Schnitzler’s casual descriptions of sexual conquests – he was often in relationships with several women at once, and for a period of some years he kept a record of every orgasm. Collections of Schnitzler’s letters have also been published.

Schnitzler’s works were called “Jewish filth” by Adolf Hitler and were banned by the Nazis in Austria and Germany. In 1933, when Joseph Goebbels organized book burnings in Berlin and other cities, Schnitzler’s works were thrown into flames along with those of other Jews, including Einstein, Marx, Kafka, Freud and Stefan Zweig.

His novella Fräulein Else has been adapted a number of times including the German silent film Fräulein Else (1929), starring Elisabeth Bergner, and a 1946 Argentine film, The Naked Angel, starring Olga Zubarry.”

And then there’s Traumnovelle:

“Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, also known as Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle), is a 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. The book deals with the thoughts and psychological transformations of Doctor Fridolin over a two-day period after his wife confesses having had sexual fantasies involving another man. In this short time, he meets many people who give clues to the world Schnitzler creates. This culminates in the masquerade ball, a wondrous event of masked individualism, sex, and danger for Fridolin as the outsider.

It was first published in installments in the magazine Die Dame between December 1925 and March 1926. The first book edition appeared in 1926 in S. Fischer Verlag and was adapted in 1999 into the film Eyes Wide Shut by director-screenwriter Stanley Kubrick and co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael.

The book belongs to the period of Viennese decadence after the turn of the 19th century.

To read Traumnovelle, here’ s PDF link.

As is well-known Stanley Kubrick adapted Traumnovelle as Eyes Wide Shut — his very last film:

Less well-known is the fact that it was a “passion project” Kubrick had thought about making for the better part of his life. Had he made it earlier in his career, Kubrick would very likely had done it to “period” both in homage to Ophuls and in relation to his own fascination with the turn of the century.

Done as a “contemporary” story Eyes Wide Shut is “period” nonetheless thansk to Kubrick’s massive reproduction of 8th street in the Village on an enormous British sound stage.

8th Street

This is how the street looked to him the last time he saw it in 1962 when Lolita premiered in New York. But such details were of little concern to most critics and audiences who were greatly divided on just how effective this off, distant, chilly film was and what it had to say about marriage, relationships and orgies.

(EWS)

Here’s a discussion of the film on The Charlie Rose Show:

And here’s a rendering of Traumnovelle that might be offered as a “corrective” to Kubrick:

And now, Dmitri Shostakovich:

(“My October Symphony” Pet Shop Boys)

(Shostakovich Waltz #2)

*

p.s. Hey. Today I have restored one of my dead blog’s old posts wherein David Ehrenstein used to turn this place into a magic movie theater, in this case one that fusses out the parallels between Kubrick and Schnitzler and much more. Enjoy yourselves. And thank you again from the future, David. ** Steve Erickson, I can definitely see the Billboard charts addiction. If I had the brain space, I’d probably join you. Look forward to the interview. Everyone, Here’s [Steve Erickson’s] interview with Irish director Pat Collins on his film SONG OF GRANITE. Considering what a nightmare this interview was to set up technologically, [Steve] think[s] the end result reads quite well. How many claps does it take to make money? Yeah, Morris is easily one of my favorite directors. Gosh, I hardly think the astonishing ‘Mr. Death’ and the ‘First Person’ series and even ‘The Fog of War’, for instance, are evidence of any kind of downhill slope. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha. Thank you again ‘in person’ for aligning the stars via this old post. I was just reading something about how good Annette Benning is in that film. Everyone, Mr. E has reviewed the very, very talked about film ‘Call Me By Your Name’, and you can find his thoughts precisely here. ** Sypha, Hi. And George made it three. Yeah, I have no idea who David Laid is, but it’s interesting or says something about how I make those points that I didn’t even notice the photo subject’s repetition. Nice. ** Chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Super great to see you, maestro and buddy! How’s your voice this morning? Honored that you found the Duras post’s goodies swipeable. My French pronunciation is for the birds. It’s something like you forget the ‘h’ and say Bart but with this kind of weirdly soft ‘t’ that’s hard (for the non-French) to get right. The micro-format is dreamy, I totally agree. In a way, or really in more than ‘a way’, the gif fictions I write are all about the micro-format and then trying to make the micro’s outer edges porous enough that they intersect and create a whole while also sparkling in isolation or something. So, in that way, I’m working sort of passionately with that form myself these days. That’s exciting, the revision you’re doing to your book and just the new process in general. No, I haven’t read ‘The Vegan Muffin’ by Tao. Is it findable? I’ll find it. Wow, thanks for sharing that excitement. Would love to hear more or anything. Mm, there was this one home haunt that was so elaborate, so intensively realized, that snaked around the front-to-back-to-front yard of a guy’s house and wherein he dug this sizable hole in part of his yard and filled it with water to make a lake and built a rickety bridge over it and you had to cross the bridge and he had animatronic alligators in the water that leapt up and tried to eat your legs. That was very impressive. In general, something I loved was that the person or person who made the haunt, in a number of cases teenagers, would start you off acting all scary and weird to you, and then, when you exited, they’d be standing there anxiously wanting to know what you thought, and they would be almost beside themselves with excitement and pride about what they had made. That was really beautiful. Again, it’s lovely to see you, Chris! You take big care too! ** Jamie, Hi, man. I am partying in my mind at your upswing. I talked Zac yesterday. He’s only read it through once, and he said he’s really excited about it, and he wants/needs to read it again while thinking about how and if it can visualized interestingly, and he’s going to go through it with a fine toothed comb, and I think we’ll meet about that this weekend. So far so good. What?! About Jonathan. What?!?! I guess calling the cops on him would be too much hassle. Anyway, he’s a prick, end of story. So that’s that, and you’re just going to move on, or will you possibly go back to the job when he realizes his treasure chest is now empty? My Wednesday was low-key. Finished this new gif story I’ve been working on for a while and which I’d intended to polish off by Halloween for related thematic reasons, so that was good. Was going to go look at art, but that got delayed to today. Mm, otherwise, … forgettable. May the fireworks display you turned my yesterday into fill your today’s sky with the swirliest fog. Paint ball love, Dennis. ** Chaim Hender, Hi. I think that effect can be consciously attempted by a writer, or I try at least, but I do think it’s easier to see the potential for that in a raw text by someone else and try to edit it into the foreground, which is what I try to do with the slave profile texts sometimes when they’re flabby and don’t seem to realize their own strengths. Ha, that’s funny, because I thought ‘drew’ and his profile were so, so, so Montana. And I’ve only driven through that state. Those things you learned in school seem either to be overdressing the obvious or just dead wrong and over-controlling or the sound of cynicism unsuccessfully neutralized via an artificially soothing tone. Excellent thoughts about the stats and what they mean. Thank you. Me too re: my childish excitement and consequent lack of cool. Any coolness I seem to have is the result of my perceived status, I think. Great comment, man. How did today treat you? ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! As I mentioned to Jamie up above, so far Zac is excited by what I wrote, but he’s going to go through it more carefully thinking both as the co-writer and as the eventual visualizer of the script to see what he thinks needs fixing and what he finds interesting to visualize or not. Yeah, those two taxing months will be over before you know it, you know? Yes, I finished the new gif work, and I’ll post it here this weekend. My day was just finishing said gif work and just random thises and thats. Perfectly okay. How was today? What was the most surprising thing that happened? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Interesting: I remember Martin Bartlett now that you mention him. Wow. I’d like to see that Fowler film. I’ll watch the local spaces or try Vimeo or something. Thanks. And a very, very, very happy birthday to you, one day late but fiery as hell! ** Misanthrope, Hi. As far as I know, yes, it is. Like I told Sypha, I have no idea who that Laid guy is, or, well, I know what he inspires at least. I think you just have to trust your insights in situations like that guy’s question and go with your gut. A person doesn’t need to know everything about you to know you. ** Nik, Hey. Yeah, I do love the the image of Assforallrich and Anonymous typing their reviews of each other into their phone and doing what they’re reviewing simultaneously. Meta. That is very interesting and exciting sounding: the student play and your interventions and overseeing. Mm, I certainly do experiments when preparing for a film or theater piece. Ideally, I like to have the opportunity to observe/get to know the performers and their interests and strengths and so on and then try to do personally customized experiments, and, in my case, I do tend to get that luxury partly through the auditioning. We definitely really want to bring ‘Crowd’ to the States. The US is tough. It’s not like it was back in the 80s and early 90s when there was a hunger and, consequently, a market to some degree in the US for ‘avant-garde’ European theater and dance. Now the money’s much tighter and the risk-taking by venues is much, much lower, so it’s hard to get work over there when it isn’t made by big one of the big, proven Names. But, yes, we’re going to try. Thanks! ** Okay. You have your blog day set out in front of you, and you know what to do. See you tomorrow.