But for Elizabeth Montagu, this would have been a very different article. In February , Greene was shown around the Austrian capital by the daughter of the second Lord Montagu, who had joined London Films after having a highly eventful war.
He became absolutely enamoured of Vienna. But what is not in doubt is that he was sufficiently inspired by his sojourn with Montagu to pitch writer Holly Martins Joseph Cotten into the five zones of occupied Vienna in his quest to discover the truth about his supposedly deceased best friend, Harry Lime Orson Welles. The odd scene was also filmed at Isleworth and the Sascha Films studio in the suburb of Sievering.
It may seem invidious to begin a tour of screen Vienna with a picture that was filmed entirely in Berlin, but G. Designers Otto Erdmann and Hans Schule built the rundown Melchiorgasse set in the Staaken Studio that had been converted from a Zeppelin hangar, while the interiors were customised from standing sets at the Zoo Atelier.
But Pabst bathed them in shadow to achieve the Stimmung atmosphere that made the plight of the impoverished Asta Nielsen and Greta Garbo all the more sombre, as they contemplated prostitution in order to feed their families. The bakery scene, in which Strauss Esmond Knight is inspired by the rhythms of bread-making, demonstrates the mastery of subtle camera movement and montage that would later prove crucial in more familiar Hitchcockian scenarios that employed music rising to a crescendo to sustain suspense.
They even go to the Prater Park to see the waxworks and be transported to Venice and Switzerland on the cyclorama. But the Baroque palace never looked more majestic than in the trilogy idealising Elisabeth of Austria, the beloved wife of the Emperor Franz Josef. Much of the action in the first instalment takes place around the Imperial Villa at Bad Ischl, but this makes the entry into Vienna on a Danube steamer and the gilded carriage procession to the wedding ceremony at the Michaelerkirche standing in for the Augustinerkirche all the more spectacular.
