Alexander Korda - Vienna and Berlin

Vienna and Berlin

During the next eleven years, Korda made films in several countries, working in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris before eventually moving to Hollywood. He worked closely with many artists on his films, including his Hungarian friend, painter and set designer Emile Lahner.

After leaving Hungary, Korda accepted an invitation from Count Alexander Kolowrat to work for his company Sascha-Film in the Austrian capital Vienna. Korda worked alongside the Kolowrat, who had attracted several leading Hungarian and German directors into his employment, on the 1920 historical epic The Prince and the Pauper. The film was a major international success and inspired Korda with the idea of making "international films" with global box office appeal.

Korda's next two films, Masters of the Sea (1922) and A Vanished World (1922), were both nautical-set adventures based on Hungarian novels. By that stage, Korda had grown irritated with Kolowrat's interference with his work and left Sascha to make an independent film, Samson and Delilah (1922), set in the world of opera. The film was made on a lavish scale, with large crowd scenes, and a lengthy shooting schedule which lasted a hundred and sixty working days. In spite of this, the film was not a success.

Unable to find any further backing for his film projects, Korda left Vienna and travelled to Germany. Korda was able to raise finance for the melodrama The Unknown Tomorrow (1923). With backing from Germany's biggest film company UFA, Korda returned to Vienna to make Everybody's Woman (1924). While there, he began work on his next film, the historical Tragedy in the House of Habsburg (1924) which depicts the Mayerling Incident. It only earned back around half of its production cost. He followed this with Dancing Mad (1925), another melodrama.

Korda had frequent problems with money, and often had to receive support from friends and business associates. Korda had cast his wife Maria Corda as the female lead in all his German-language films and to a large degree his productions depended on her star power. There was already a growing tension in their marriage which would come to a head once they went to America. Korda cast her again in A Modern Dubarry (1927), which adapted the life story of Madame Du Barry based on an original screenplay by Lajos Biro. The film may have aimed to highlight Maria Corda's star potential to Hollywood. Korda made his final German film Madame Wants No Children (1926) for the American studio's Fox's Berlin-based subsidiary. Although made later, it was released before A Modern Dubarry.