Giants of Entertainment | Paula Wessely # 2023

PAULA WESSELY

Through her marriage to Attila Hörbiger, she became a member of a renowned acting clan. Above all, however, Wessely had appeared in many entertainment films, with which she decisively shaped the style of the - not only Austrian - cinema of the time.

Paula Wessely already paved the way for Nazi ideas in Austrofascist tendency films such as "Ernte" (1936). In the 1950s, when Wessely had her own film production company, she hired former Nazi propagandists such as Gustav Ucicky and "Jud Süß" director Veit Harlan, with whom she made the anti-homosexuality film "Anders als du und ich" in 1957. In her first film after the war, "Der Engel mit der Tromune" (1948), Wessely played a half-Jew who is driven to suicide. For Elfriede Jelinek, Wessely is a "war profiteer" who was "dealt with very lightly" in post-war Austria. This aspect of Wessely's career will also be discussed - and with it the fact that she was one of the few who later apologized for it. In addition, an interview with André Heller, who was one of Wessely's confidants.

Excerpts from her most important films will be counter-cut and compared with her major stage roles. In addition, interviews with family members (Maresa Hörbiger, Cornelius Obonya), confidants (Andre Heller, Erika Pluhar, Klaus Bachler) on the most important stages of Wessely's career and on her private life.