![]() ![]() Both films contain musical numbers and dance numbers, whose sexual subtexts––especially regarding the waltz––become amplified through the ways in which the musical moments are visually stylised. Two ostensibly opposing images of the city of Vienna form the background for these two case studies: Vienna as the nostalgic screen incarnation of the schmaltzy waltz dream and Vienna as the centre of social and moral decay during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. My second analysis of the musical moments in the film Ein Walzertraum ( A Waltz Dream, 1925) shows equally how the waltz in its use as a proxy for sexuality and erotic encounters, destabilises the form and narrative of the film by transposing musical features onto the filmic language. The first case study, Seine Hoheit, der Eintänzer ( His Highness, the Gigolo, 1927), serves to demonstrate how the editing, montage, and camera movements of a dance performance can lead to an abstract visual style that articulates the social anxiety of the post-war period in an otherwise conventionally shot film. ![]() In this chapter, I investigate how the notions of abstraction and sexuality in musical numbers of Austrian silent films can be read as destabilising agents of the films’ narratives and ideologies. ![]()
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