Rewriting Bachmann's Malina (1971) in the Age of Waldheim

Abstract This paper analyzes the drastic cuts made to Elfriede Jelinek's 1991 filmscript of Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina (1971) alongside the hypocritical omissions of Kurt Waldheim's political memoirs to situate her adaptation in a post‐1986 moment of Austrian reckoning with National Socialism. Whereas previous scholarship disentangles the film from its anti‐feminist reputation, this essay directs our attention to how filmmaker Werner Schroeter's removal of the culpability held by the Woman in Jelinek's script constitutes historical revisionism. Jelinek strove to write a faithful adaptation of Malina , but also sought to liberate the novel from what she terms Bachmann's “innere Zensur.” That Jelinek did not anticipate that her script would itself be heavily edited is both ironic and ideologically charged. I argue that the film Malina (1991), in reducing the Woman to an illegible and infantile victim, ultimately replicates strategic constructions of victimhood in Austria after the Anschluss.