![]() ![]() Born into an upper-class Jewish Viennese family in 1881, Zweig had achieved considerable success and fame during his lifetime as a writer, dramatist, and critic. The opulent, cultured life of Bartok in the film mirrors Zweig’s own existence in Vienna before the Nazi annexation. The film’s long-overdue release ultimately turns an important lens on politics, apathy, and complicity in our own time.Ī notary to the wealthiest families in Austria, Bartok refuses to recognize that his charmed life is disintegrating before his eyes. Published posthumously in 1943, Chess Story is a gripping meditation on the psychological torture of isolation ironically, the film’s stateside release was delayed by COVID-19. This is the scene laid out in Chess Story, Philipp Stölzl’s 2021 film adaptation of Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig’s last novella. Before the night is over, Bartok is arrested and imprisoned in the luxurious Hotel Metropole, which was confiscated by the Nazis and turned into the largest Gestapo headquarters outside of Berlin. ![]() Hours later, the Austrian prime minister resigns, and the Nazis march into Vienna unopposed as part of the Anschluss, the 1938 Nazi annexation of Austria. When a friend pulls him aside to warn him of the advancing Nazis, the alternately charming and obnoxious Bartok dismisses him with a joke and returns to the dance floor. Josef Bartok during a stately ball at the Vienna Opera House in March 1938. “AS LONG AS Vienna keeps dancing, the world can’t end,” quips Dr. ![]()
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