Abstract

World Film Locations: Vienna provides a panorama of international motion pictures shot on location in Austria's once imperial capitol. Informative reviews of 46 film scenes and evocative essays examine for the first time Vienna's relationship to cinema outside the waltz fantasies shot in the studios of Hollywood, London, Paris, Berlin... and Vienna. Illustrations and screen-grabs are set alongside current images, as well as city maps locating ‘cinematic Vienna’. A Vienna at the crossroads of a turbulent history, as a source of great music and literature, and a site of world-famous architecture ranging from gothic cathedrals and baroque palaces to Jugendstil (Vienna's art nouveau) to the eco-challenges of the postmodern is revealed. Spotlight essays cover the images that evoke the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the pioneering filmmaking of Willi Forst and Walter Reisch in the 1930s; Vienna's role in the entertainment cinema of the Third Reich; opulent royal epics of the 1950s and the city as backdrop for international moviemaking; Jewish filmmakers and their take on lost cultural imagery; and a startling New Wave cinema from filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, and Ulrich Seidl.