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:
(Traumnovelle)
And now, Dmitri Shostakovich:
(“My October Symphony” Pet Shop Boys)
(Shostakovich Waltz #2)
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p.s. Hey. Today Mr. Ehrenstein is back to transform this blog into the cabinet of wonders that he calls Le Petit MacMahon, and the program he has chosen for you is super fascinating. Give it a chance, and it will avail your best senses and build mental muscles to boot. Please sit back, pore and click, and give yourselves the pleasure. And recount something or other from your experiences to David, if you wish, please. Thanks, and mega-thanks to you, maestro E. ** Armando, Hi. Oh, yeah, it must have arrived while I was the copyedit phase of the posting process. I didn't know there was a 5-hour version of 'Das Boot'. Okay, that's very interesting. I'll look for an opportunity, thanks. Hm, I saw Led Zep ... four times. Once on their tour for the first album, twice on their tour for the second album, both in 1969 (?), and once more I think on the tour for 'III', and then I lost interest. Gosh, I don't remember the sound being atrocious at all, but, you know, it was a zillion years ago. I just remember the sound being crushing in a good way. I will, re: Michael. I hope to see him this weekend. ** David Ehrenstein, Again, major thanks to you for today! Fantastic post, opportunity, etc.! That clip that the post reminded you of was fun, but I wasn't sure I understood the connection? Which I liked, of course. ** Steevee, Hi. I was happy to read that Voice review, yes. I don't really have any experience with online dating in that sense. Let forefront/italicize your question for everyone here and see what happens. Everyone, Steevee has a question. Can those of you with relative experience or knowledge help him out with an answer of some sort? Thanks a lot. Here he is: 'Does Anyone here have positive experience with on-line dating? I tried it about a decade ago, with the now-defunct Spring Street Personals, and only had one good experience, but I'm feeling lonely and ready to try it again. Are there any sites people would recommend? I just took a look at some ads on OK Cupid, although I haven't signed up for that site. It's really hard to figure out how to make yourself sound interesting or figure out how to approach someone else on the site, since you've never going to share 100% of the same interests.' ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Ah, cool. Yeah, Signer can be a lot of fun. I didn't see a clip of that work you described in my searching. Shame. I did read that piece about life on the 'Knight of Cups' set, and, yeah, it was really fascinating. Thanks for thinking of me. Oh, no, fight that cold with everything you've got, which means ... sleep? Vitamin C? Colds are unfortunately and strangely hard things to fight. ** Bill, Hi, B. Yeah, I wish I could say that my back is perfecto now. It's not, but I'm able to gingerly pretend it is for longer stretches. Hiorns is uneven, I think. He's a very cool guy, I know him a little. I think his work is getting stronger and more interesting. Casting calls? That's intriguing. What if anything can you say about the project? ** Dóra Grőber, Hi Dóra! Our luck indeed. Yeah, what you said totally makes sense, and, probably unsurprisingly, I can relate. Oh, what's up with pamphlet project? Thank you for the link to her blog. I'll go look at it today. My day wasn't bad. My dear friend the artist Scott Treleaven is newly here in Paris doing a residency, and I saw him, which was really nice. My French publisher POL told me the French edition of 'The Marbled Swarm', which comes out here in May, went to the printer's yesterday, so that was exciting! And Zac and I put our heads together to strategize re: some texts we have to write as part of the package our producer will use to fund-raise for our new film, and today we have to start drafting them up. And two new future showings of 'Like Cattle Towards Glow' were confirmed. So, it was a pretty productive day. What did Friday present to you? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks about the galerie show! That's a very interesting question. I think the younger and/or newer people making films that are as essentially experimental as 'KoC' are almost without exception showing their work in the visual art context, in galleries and art museums. That seems to be the only context in which that kind of work is deemed appropriate and acceptable these days. And visual art critics tend to be far more open to investigating and exploring the various levels at which experimental video/film works because, obviously, visual art is seen as a medium that is forever unfinished and frontier-like. I think there used to be a fair number of critics who viewed film that way, but they seem few and far between now. There are a number of very interesting and quite experimental artists making video and film work. They're just rigidly contextualized as visual artists who happen to be working with video and film, and critics who cover film don't tend to see their work and, when they do, don't see their work as falling into the area they cover. So, the venerable tradition of experimental filmmaking in America has mostly subdivided off, with the exception of older, long established figures who are still making films like, oh, Benning or Mekas and etc. Malick is, for better or worse, making experimental films in a mainstream film context. And he has the clout to get the budgets to make his work look visually beautiful and to work with well known actors, and I think that confuses people and critics too. It didn't used to re: his work before the shift in his filmmaking technique with 'ToL'. When his films were working with calmness and lingering, people seemed to be able to accept his decision to use stars to create a certain kind of textured, expectation-saddled figure in his films' fabric. Zac and I had an interesting talk yesterday about the disconnect in the response to 'KoC'. He was saying that he thinks it has partly to do with this strange thing that has happened in recent years where people tend to immediately see a film's technique/style/ look /cinematography and its 'content', meaning its characters, story, dialogue and so on, as being separable. In the case of most films appearing in the mainstream, that may well be an understandable approach. But when a film like 'KoC' comes along where those things are not divisible, where the film's meaning resides equally in what the technique is 'saying' and in the material presented by the characters and representable ideas and language that it is working with, it's like people don't even know how to read the film, or they have this intense resistance to the idea of seeing every respect of a film as a whole and organic thing. I don't know. I think there are probably many reasons why the disconnect its happening. It's funny you mention Korine because we were trying to think of newer experimental American filmmakers who have successfully, to one degree or another, achieved recognition in the conventional film realm, and, off the top of our heads, we could only think of Korine's work from 'Gummo' through 'Trash Humpers'. Anyway, sorry for the long answer. This is something I've been thinking a lot about, obviously. No, I haven't heard the new M83. That's interesting and potentially too bad. I can imagine that, after the last album, it's possible his work could go a 'wrong' way. ** Jonathan Bryant, Hi, Jonathan. I'm very glad to hear you're good. Get sun? What kind of doctor is she/he, ha ha? (Not a big sun fan here.) Getting to write every day and money being tight, yep, I hear you. That's my lifelong life too in a nutshell, but, man, I'm grateful. Thank you a lot for characterizing your work. Nothing wrong with niche. Niche can be nuclear. And 'under-explored horror sub-genre' sounds nothing but intriguing. I hope I'll get to read your work sometime, if you feel like it. The thing with the worlds in my work is that, well, I intend them to resemble the real to a degree that one can, at times, on some level, believe in them in the way one believes in non-fiction, but they're really about the imagination and about an attempt to share mine, I guess. The thing with the escort posts, and especially with the slave ones, is that, based on my now-long experience of regularly haunting the sites where those profiles are lodged, they are people trying engage with the fantasies of potential clients/masters and, in the case of the escorts, get a job, or with the slaves, in most cases, I think, instigate a perverse, exciting flirtation. With exceptions, obviously. Well, I'm very happy if my work and the blog are helping cause some kind maturation that sits well with how you like to think and adventure and imagine. I'm very grateful to hear that. Thank you, Jonathan. ** Right. You are safely and, if you so choose, gloriously in the 'hands' of Mr. Ehrenstein from here on in, 'in' being tomorrow at the earliest. See you then.