Updates, Live: Hans Moser and the Epoch of Viennese Films

Hans Moser in Meine Tochter lebt in Wien, 1940
no copyright infringement intended
(http://www.wolfgang-siska.at/popup_image.php?pID=3344)

(click here for the Romanian version)

A poster that can be found in Wofgang Siska Shop in Vienna, together with many other Wiens Filmsprogramme und Zeitschriften, memorabilia coming from the epoch of Wiener Filme, the Viennese Films.

That poster is of the only movie with Hans Moser that I had the chance to watch so far. Meine Tochter lebt in Wien (My Daughter lives in Vienna) had been made in 1940. I saw it sometime by the end of the fifties. I was a kid, and one evening Frau Paranici, a very good friend of my parents, took me to see it. She knew German very well and had a special liking for the Viennese dialect. Well, this movie was spoken in a savory Viennese dialect, and not only that: Hans Moser was famous (as Frau Paranici explained to me) for his way of mumbling words and sentences without finishing them.

I enjoyed the movie enormously, and even now, after so many decades, I remember it with an immense pleasure. Hans Moser plays the role of a good old guy from a little town in Austria. His daughter moved to Vienna and just sent him a photo of a superb convertible in front of a superb villa. On the back of the photo a few words: she got married! So the man goes to Vienna, convinced that the daughter is married to a millionaire. A lot of funny things unravel, as our hero finds out that the millionaire has a mistress, there is also a guy who is teeming around, trying to persuade the millionaire's wife to divorce; add to this the old maid who is spying the masters, listening behind the doors, and the tableau is complete. Hans Moser starts immediately to make order in all this madness, to realize at the end (when everything is again in good order, the mistress is no more, the old maid is minding her own business, etc, etc.) that in one respect he has been terribly wrong all the time: his daughter is married, that's true, she's even expecting a baby; only she is not the wife of the millionaire! Her husband is the millionaire's driver.

It was, as I would find out later, the typical role of Hans Moser: a man of modest condition (small merchant, waiter, porter, and the like), absolutely honest, absolutely old-fashioned, absolutely not sophisticated, while absolutely quick-minded, the kind of guy who firstly is cutting your ear and then counts them, to realize just at the end that you didn't have three ears, only two, so there was no need of any cutting.

I looked for this movie on the web today. I didn't find it, unfortunately. I found instead other movies with Hans Moser, and maybe I will put one or two of them here.

He was also an interpret of Viennese songs, Wienerlieder as they are known, and here is a video with a nice one: Mein Herz das ist ein Bilderbuch vom alten Wien (My Heart is a Picture Book of Old Vienna). Enjoy!

(video by Franz Joseph 1)

Kennst den oiden Weaner?
Den, mit der Vergina?
Mit dem gold'nen Herzen und dem Riesengranz?
Kennst den Kaiser Franzl
und an echtes Gstanzl,
kennst die Märchenstadt am Donaustrand?
Mein Herz, das ist ein Bilderbuch vom oidn Wien,
da blätter ich ganz heimlich manches Moi darin.
Und werd' vor Freud' so narrisch dann, ois wie an Kind,
wenn ich den oidn Prater wie er war drin find:
Auf Seite drei, schau ich die feschen Maderln an,
auf Seite vier, do foahrt die oide Pferdebahn,
auf Seite fünf, sieht man die Leut' zum Blumenkorso zieh'n:
Mein Herz, das ist ein Bildebuch vom oidn Wien!

Liebe Wiener Vroni!
Du bist so voll Harmonie!
Jeder Zauber woar an schöner Walzertakt!
Die Bummerin ham' g'klungen,
die Maderl ham g'sungen,
Wean, dein Zauber hat noch jedem g'foin!

Mein Herz, das ist ein Bilderbuch vom oidn Wien,
da blätter ich ganz heimlich manches Moi darin.
Und werd' vor Freud' so narrisch dann, ois wie an Kind,
wenn I d' Fiaker und die guat Musik drin find:
Auf Seite sechs, da dirigiert da Johann Strauß,
auf Seite sie'm, trang's grad Prioschkipferl 'naus
und auf der letzten Seiten singt der liebe Augustin:
Mein Herz, das ist ein Bilderbuch vom oidn Wien!

(http://www.golyr.de/hans-moser/songtext-mein-herz-das-ist-ein-bilderbuch-vom-alten-wien-599485.html)