In Orson Welles’ Vienna, Welles goes walking through the city, speaking about the people, about Hotel Sacher, about Viennese specialties and about the Prater Ferris wheel. His memories of the film The Third Man lead him to consider Vienna as the center of espionage, which is immediately confirmed with the kidnapping by two agents of Senta Berger, the “most beautiful woman in Vienna”. As was typical for Welles, filming was not carried out only in the streets of Vienna, but also in Zagreb, while indoor shots with Senta Berger, Mickey Rooney, Arte Johnson and Peter Bogdanovich were filmed in Los Angeles. The film brings together fragments of a shooting script in which the soundtrack was non fully conserved. The 35mm positive was duped, and the magnetic was mixed and re-recorded in optical sound.

Stefan Droessler