Vienna as a film location

Star detective Sherlock Holmes undergoing psychoanalysis, James Bond in a fever of romance, and an original imperial crown as a prop. All of this is possible in Vienna. In their guidebook with a difference entitled "Drehort Wien", German journalist Achim Zeilmann and his co-author Roland Weixlgartner take a cinema tour of Vienna highlighting twenty-six films that have been shot there.

From "Sodom und Gomorrha", the most expensive film of its time, in 1922 to the resurrection of a 1970s TV legend, the popular Viennese working-class hero Mundl Sackbauer, the authors revisit Vienna, a city that alongside its historical architecture also has a few exciting stories to tell. One of them, of course, is "The Third Man" based on Graham Greene’s novel, perennially one of the top films of all time. The story of the penicillin dealer Harry Lime could only have taken place in the bombed-out ruins of post-war Vienna. An unforgettable view of the city is also presented in Richard Linklater’s "Before Sunrise" from 1995, a romantic film about the growing love between two travellers who meet in Vienna.

History in films

The differences between the two films could not be greater, not only in terms of the theme but also regarding the city itself and the astonishing metamorphosis that it has undergone in the fifty years that separate the two stories.

One of the features of the book is that apart from the humorous anecdotes surrounding the filming itself, the authors also return again and again to the history of the city. "Drehort Wien" is thus more than a book about particular films and their links with the location. The history of Austria is also ever-present, from the end of the Habsburg monarchy, as the authors discuss in the chapter on the film "Hotel Sacher", to the production conditions during the Second World War in Willi Forst’s films, and modern-day productions such as "The Piano Player" by Michael Haneke or "Klimt" by Raoul Ruiz.

All this makes "Drehort Wien" into a book for visitors to Vienna and inhabitants of the city alike. The chapter on Hans-Karl Breslauer’s film "The City Without Jews" based on the novel of the same name by Hugo Bettauer vividly conjures up the mood of the day. Bettauer, who foresaw the extermination of the Jews, was murdered by a Nazi sympathiser for publishing the magazine "Wochenzeitschrift für Lebenskultur und Erotik". He was also a champion of women’s rights, which did not make him popular with the authorities in the patriarchal interwar society.

In this context it is interesting to note that the history of film in Vienna started with a woman, Louise Kolm-Fleck, founder of the Rosenhügelstudio. Although she was the second woman film director in the world, there is sparse information about her life and works. This possibly explains why she is not given the tribute she deserves in Drehort Wien.

A difficult choice

The authors had to leave out a number of other films that they would like to have included. There is little source material available about Helmut Qualtinger’s "Mann im Schatten" and no photos of the shooting, for example. The authors also reluctantly omitted "Die Grosse Liebe", Otto Preminger’s first film.

One film that does make the cut is "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution", written by Nicholas Meyer (who was subsequently to write two Star Trek films) and directed by Herbert Ross, in which Sherlock Holmes lands on Sigmund Freud’s couch. The film was shot at the original location at Berggasse 19. Unfortunately for the crew, the original cobblestones were paved over shortly before shooting began and a different street had to be chosen for the coach journey. This is a problem that Marijana Stoisits from the Vienna Film Commission is also familiar with. As Vienna is popular for filming, some things have to be preserved to ensure that the locations remain attractive. In spite of the demand for familiar Vienna images like the Opera House and Giant Ferris Wheel, as seen in the James Bond film "The Living Daylights", for example - it is said that former mayor Helmut Zilk was so keen to promote Vienna as a film location that he allegedly said he would be prepared to blow up the underground railway for the 007 film - there are plenty of other less well-known sites available. The Vienna Film Commission has recently completed a campaign on the public housing of the Red Vienna period.

Most expensive film prop in Vienna

The photogenic qualities of Vienna’s public housing have already been admirably demonstrated in the Mundl series. The success of the television series starring the complaining Karl Merkatz was the reason for including a chapter on its 2008 cinema spin-off "Echte Wiener - Die Sackbauer-Saga". There was no room unfortunately for new films like Austria’s Oscar candidate "Breathing" or Cronenberg’s "A Dangerous Method". Peter Fonda is currently in Vienna for his new film "The Lazarus Protocol" about a US soldier who comes to Vienna to seek out the terrorists responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center. As the authors originally had seventy films connected with Vienna on their list, it is to be hoped that there will be a sequel. In the meantime interested readers can find out about film locations in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin. The most expensive prop of all times could well come from Vienna, however: the imperial crown of Rudolf II, which featured in the Austrian publicity film "1. April 2000" and was said at the time, in 1952, to be worth seventy million dollars.