Reviewed by: Angeschlossen und gleichgeschaltet. Kino in Österreich 1938–1945 by Klaus Christian Vögl Robert Dassanowsky Angeschlossen und gleichgeschaltet. Kino in Österreich 1938–1945. By Klaus Christian Vögl. Vienna: Böhlau, 2018. Pp. 447. Paper €60.00. ISBN 978-3205202974. Following the collapse of the Vienna-Hollywood coproduction deal of 1936, which might have reduced Ständestaat Austria's financial need to export films to Germany and have its major companies continue to abide by Nazi racist laws to do so, mainstream Austrian film had lost much of its specific content, qualities, and style to a general Gleichschaltung promoting an increase of German coproductions and cultural messages. Vienna's largest film studio, Tobis-Sascha, had been "still arisiert" (35) before the Anschluss, and the iconoclastic independent Emigrantenfilm productions made with Jewish and anti-Nazi talent in Vienna, Budapest, and Prague disappeared, with its talent once again on the run. It has often been said that Goebbels expected he could walk into the Austrian film industry on the day of the Anschluss and find it ideologically ready for immediate assignment, given that its Gleichschaltung through infiltration and manipulation had been a working goal since 1934 when the restriction of Jewish talent in imported Austrian film was first set (34). Klaus Christian Vögl's meticulously researched and detailed study takes on exactly what has been needed for a more encompassing examination of the so-called "Wien-Film" era, that of the centralized studio of Vienna, which would have its specific role in the super-centralized triumvirate that included the leading force of UFA in Berlin and Barrandov in Prague. The examination and analysis here regard not the art of [End Page 197] film, but the system of cinema theater presentation and its relationships with the individual owner, the studio, the party and the municipality, film distribution venues, the development and maintenance of cinema houses, the propagandistic charge of programming, other branch partnerships, as well as the "organized" dissolution of cinema exhibition beginning in 1944. Vögl's direct theoretical principal, "Film ist ungleich Kino" (15), clearly fashions the aims of his study—there are no digressions into film analysis no matter how tempting that might be at certain points. His devotion to a "thematische Eingrenzung" (15) allows for a clearer understanding of the pure business and impure political aspects of Nazi cinema in annexed Austria, and vis-à-vis its Berlin leadership than has appeared before. The success of this text is based in the author's rejection of creating a traditional history book to tracing the flow of cinema development as a subordinate result of the "Ostmark's" geopolitical development. Vögl instead creates an efficient five-phase format that focuses principally on cinema business, law, technology, propaganda, and party relationships, which influenced the Reich rather than simply seeming to react to it. The first phase, from March to June 1938, deals with the initial "Einbindung des österreichischen rechtlichen und politischen Systems in das reichsdeutsche … insbesondere den Vorbereitungen zur 'Arisierung' der jüdischen Filmtheater …" (84). Its "lawful" basis is imbedded in the "Volksabstimmung," which became the first important role for the Reichsfilmkammer in presenting Anschluss propaganda across the entire Austrian landscape, including the deployment of "30 Tonfilmwagen" that would travel to any and every tiny village without a cinema to at once entertain and instruct its Volk. The second phase, from June 1938 to the start of war in September 1939, deals with the established law on "Aryanization" of Jewish wealth from a cinema industry aspect. A time lag was allowed for actual confiscation due to the relationship of Jewish cinema owners (the "unacceptable" studio functionaries had long been dismissed) who were still connected personally to the distribution of Hollywood and other foreign films in the Reich's film programming. Following this phase, the Reichsfilmkammer would be in charge of all film distribution, selection of theater management, and cinema theater concessions. Vögl's third phase runs from September 1938 to the summer of 1943, which sums up the experiences of the Reich until the recognized turning point of the war. Film distribution from now-Allied and even neutral countries had ended, and the selection was reduced to German...