Das Notizbuch des Mr. Pim (1930)

Quote:
Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim is structured around competing and contradictory narratives. While notes taken during an interview with a right-wing journalist – a convenient device in a silent film – tell of economic and cultural decline, of the very great damage that the empowerment of the workers has done to ‘das schone alte Wien’ [beautiful old Vienna], this account and its nostalgia for ‘das goldene Wienerherz’ [the golden heart of Vienna] are repeatedly juxtaposed with images of capitalist exploitation, militarism, extreme poverty and grim living conditions in the pre-1918 period. The charges against the Socialist administration are then refuted, almost point by point, as Phyllis and her fiance show their visitor (who, like that other American archetype, Homer Simpson, hails from Springfield, USA!) around the new Vienna, notably taking him to Karl-Marx-Hof in order to disprove the claim that the showpiece of the municipal housebuilding programme is already in need of repair…….

Made by the Social Democrats as propaganda for the national elections in 1930 and directed by Frank Ward Rossak, Das Notizbuch des Mr Pim endeavours to create a virtuous circle: it thematizes the motif of Red Vienna proudly displaying its achievements to the outside world and winning the plaudits of even hyper-capitalist America, using that fiction (and the reality it reflects) as a means to drum up electoral support at home.