Clash By Night is showing at Film Archive Austria in Vienna on Monday, November 9 at 7:00 pm – and again on November 25 – as part of a retrospective for Austrian-born director Fritz Lang. The venue previously hosted a centennial tribute, ‘Forever Marilyn,’ in May 2026.
“Fritz Lang shifts his bleak worldview from the urban gloom of film noir to a small fishing village on the California coast. Disillusioned with life and her dreams, Mae returns there to live with her younger brother. He fears that the alluring Peggy, on whom he has his eye, might emulate too much of Mae’s independence, while she tries to settle down … There is no right life in the wrong one – Lang and screenwriter Alfred Hayes mercilessly exploit this theme in their socially critical source material. It was scandalous that they gave sympathetic traits to a woman who didn’t adhere to the moral standards of her time. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, impressed everyone – including Barbara Stanwyck: ‘She’s the next big thing!'”
– Florian Widegger
