The recent story of cinema from Austria triumphantly returning as “New Austrian Film,” sometime around the year 2000, is based on a view of previous postwar Austrian cinema as having persisted in a hopeless state of aesthetic decay. That earlier cinema, as one history puts it, favored “escapism, unproblematized national allegory, and visual pleasure.” But what exactly energized that earlier postwar cinema, if not art, and what brought so many Austrians to movie houses to see it? In her well-researched Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema, Maria Fritsche explores these questions through the study of 140 of the 212 films produced in Austria between 1946 and 1955. She concludes that the success of Austrian films during these years owes much to the fact that they served as a popular vehicle for thinking about Austrian nationhood and masculinity—two related and central issues—during the formative years of the Second Republic. Moviegoing was a common pastime in postwar Austria, especially in Vienna, where the number of tickets sold was equivalent to more than thirty cinema visits a year per citizen, and the most frequently screened films were Austrian productions (22, 27).

Homemade Men proposes that Austrian cinema after 1945 should be understood as being shaped by two forces. The first is the influence of institutions, including circumstances governing film production and distribution. For example, postwar Austrian films were initially barred from the German market by Allied law, a fact that contributed to the making of an Austrian cinema that “remained a national cinema in its address, choice of themes and visual and narrative style” (42). An especially potent instance of institutional influence is also the Second Republic's promotion of an Austrian identity distinct from Germany. The second force is the postwar psychological disposition of the Austrian cinemagoer. This cinemagoer, as described by Fritsche, embraced Austrian films because their narratives functioned as a means both to cope with recent war trauma and to think symbolically about issues of the present. Between 1946 and 1955, Austrian cinema was largely affirmative of the social order. But beneath that affirmative surface, mental work busied along. Outside the cinema, the Austrian people rebuilt the physical infrastructure of a war-battered nation. Inside the cinema, the Austrian individual rebuilt a war-battered psyche that could meet the challenges of a postwar era.

Homemade Men is primarily interested in how this second force shapes Austrian cinema, and it is through the thematization of masculinity in film that the book proceeds. Masculinity, as Fritsche explains, is interwoven with other discourses, among them, the issue of Austria's involvement in Nazi crimes and the emergence of a postwar youth culture. Thus, following the opening section, a chapter devoted to film and society, each of the four subsequent chapters presents a particular postwar genre, with each of the 140 films assigned to a genre. Chapter two considers the historical costume film, the genre that with Sissi (1955) is perhaps most associated with postwar Austrian cinema. Chapter three analyzes the Heimatfilm, a far less-studied genre whose films in the 1950s have come to be identified with “aesthetic paralysis” and “colored boredom” (105), even as, in contrast to the costume film, they unfolded in a landscape virtually unmarked by nationality and history. Chapter four is devoted to the “tourist film,” a much smaller genre that sought to conjure an image of harmony between urban and rural people. Hofrat Geiger (1947), a critical film of the early postwar period, falls within this genre. Chapter five addresses the “comedy” film, the largest genre identified, and one that functions as a kind of default category in the book's analysis.

For Fritsche, each film genre figures masculinity differently, and each presents a specific constellation of associated discourses with which masculinity interacts. For example, the “tourist film,” in works such as Rendezvous im Salzkammergut (1948) and Eva erbt das Paradies (1951), is distinguished by an emphasis on female independence and a “progressive treatment of gender” (141). Even so, the broader conclusions of Homemade Men regarding masculinity are generally sustained across the various genres. A primary conclusion is that Austrian cinema between 1946–55 registered the discrediting of models of masculinity brought about by wartime defeat by suppressing the representation of hard and virile men. This suppression contrasts not only with the overrepresentation of such men in the public sphere, but also with their resurgence in murals and election posters. Unlike postwar public iconography, which as Wolfgang Kos has shown sought to reinvigorate the muscular man of socialism as a means to strengthen weakened male positions, Austrian cinema promoted a softer masculinity. In the historical costume film, for example, the old German and Austrian military uniform that evoked memories of violence, suppression, and fear is widely replaced by the tight-fitting, slate-blue tunic worn by infantrymen in the Austro-Hungarian army. Associated with the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity, blue conveys stability, innocence, and faithfulness (78). The officer's saber is now purely decorative. Indeed, the hunting adventure of the Heimatfilm is one of the few places in postwar Austrian film where guns are acknowledged as appropriate.

Postwar Austrian films highlighted male sensitivity. Indeed, as Fritsche argues, Austrian film producers seemed to deliberately avoid scientists, inventors, or political leaders—typical subjects of biopics during the Third Reich. The preferred subject was the Austrian musician, a peaceful, ordinary man with a genuine passion for art. And, of course, such figures were highly political. To the projection of the hard German masculine, Austria countered with a cultured and emotional masculinity that seemed to be the embodied rejection of World War II legacies of nationalism, ideology, and aggression. At this point, however, it might be objected that the analysis of Homemade Men shoehorns a much longer tradition of Austrian self-styling against a (Prussian) Germany into the much shorter period of 1946–55. The high-spirited Austrian officer who flourishes while being blissfully unaware that the military is a martial enterprise is not a post-1945 invention. In fact, with scarcely any discussion of Austrian entertainment traditions, including the operetta, Homemade Men ascribes a quite high level of national genius to Austrian filmmakers who might seem to be rather desperately mobilizing prewar stereotypes. That the fiery Hungarians are accorded a greater level of respect and attractiveness than the subversive Czechs is a commonplace of past and present Austrian public discourse, and not a distinguishing story of postwar Austrian cinema. Still, the fact that the book shows enthusiasm for the possibilities of its topic is perhaps more a strength than a weakness, especially given the lack of comprehensive research on early postwar Austrian cinema. An extraordinary work, Homemade Men adds to its lucid presentation of the social and aesthetic dynamics of Austrian national cinema after 1945 a welcome number of superb readings of better and lesser-known films. The period is unlikely to be served by a more thoughtful and attentive analysis any time soon.