wed 11/12/2024

Zweig classic back on screen | reviews, news & interviews

Zweig classic back on screen

Zweig classic back on screen

The great Austrian novelist returns to the spotlight

The huge upsurge in interest in the Austrian author Stefan Zweig continues at the BFI Southbank when Letter from an Unknown Woman is revived next week. Shot by Max Ophüls in 1948, it beautifully captures the spirit of Zweig’s post-Hapsburg, pre-Freudian Vienna, where bourgeois lives are fired by romantic ardour and obsessive longing.

The novella on which it is based first appeared in 1922 and is published in this country in Selected Stories. It stars Louis Jourdan as a feckless concert pianist who, as he is about to leave Vienna to avoid a duel, hears from a woman (Joan Fontaine) who professes her long-concealed love for him. The story of the revived romance was a favourite of Zweig's: it also underpins Journey into the Past, which was published in English by Pushkin Press last year.

There’s no doubt the film’s re-release comes on the back of Pushkin Press’s heroic efforts to restore Zweig’s reputation in the English language, most recently with The World of Yesterday, his modest, humane memoir which shines a light into the Austro-Hungarian world which vanished in the 1920s and whose replacement sent Zweig towards exile and eventual suicide. Zweig’s excellent translator Anthea Bell has just been awarded an OBE (which admittedly may also have something to do with her work on Asterix).

Letter from an Unknown Woman opens on Friday 12 February at the BFI Southbank, the Irish Film Institute in Dublin and the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, while there are single screenings on Tuesday 2 March at the Courtyard in Hereford, Saturday 27 March at hmvcurzon in Wimbledon and Monday 29 March at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury. Full details here. Find Stefan Zweig's works on Amazon

Explore topics

Share this article

Add comment

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters