Filmwelten

Film Worlds

Bernadette Wegenstein

The Salzkammergut as film set can be categorised into two principal kinds of stories: romantic love stories and, more recently, crime stories. Since the 1950s the theme of romantic love has been developed predominantly in comedies and soap operas, while the crime story has more recently developed into the thriller genre, mostly for television.

I want to start by classifying both themes as classic “repression themes” set against the stunning beauty of this region and especially the mystery of its lakes. In other words, love and crime serve as popular ingredients in a form of escapism that allows the audience to project themselves into a world of happy endings and impossible real-life outcomes. For instance, in the heimatfilm (“homeland film”) genre we encounter the overcoming of class barriers, when the Emperor of Austria gets his way and marries a rambunctious teenager from a noble family in Bavaria (Sissi,1 1955); or when an Austrian baron marries a nun (The Trapp Family, 1956 and The Sound of Music, 1965); or when a charming waiter gets promoted to owning a luxury lake hotel (The White Horse Inn, 1960). As far as the thriller and horror genres are concerned, overcoming barriers is of a different nature: for instance, a police investigation of many years is resolved when a serial killer is caught and drowned by a teenager half her size on a shaky rowing boat in the middle of the Traunsee (Dead in Three Days, 2006); or, in a recent episode of the TV crime series Tatort (True Lies, 2019), when a dead body is found inside a car in the Lake Wolfgangsee and the police investigation mysteriously leads into the world of illegal weapons trafficking.

“SISSI” – THE ARCHETYPE OF HEIMATFILM KITSCH

I want to start with what I believe is one of the origins of the heimatfilm melodrama, this one set within the Salzkammergut scenery and represented in the first film in the classic Sissi-trilogy (1955), in a chapter called “To Ischl.” In this fairytale plot, none other than the Emperor of Austria proposes to a young princess, in fact demands of her to become his wife, which his mother, the Archduchess Sophie, contests because she does not deem Sissi worthy of being an empress. The scene opens with Princess Ludovika of Bavaria, played by Magda Schneider, Romy Schneider’s mother in real life, getting her daughters Helene (Nene) and Elisabeth (Sissi) ready to travel to Bad Ischl to celebrate young Emperor Franz Joseph’s birthday. The fact that one of the ladies-inwaiting is playing the romantic Chopin waltz No. 1 in A-Flat Major, called “Valse de l’adieu”, gives us a hint that this might be the “adieu” to Sissi’s childhood.

After sixteen-year-old Sissi and her entourage arrive in Bad Ischl, the teenager secretly leaves her residency and goes looking for the right place to fish, when she accidentally “fishes” the Emperor himself, as she puts it, with her fishing line that gets caught in his jacket (images 1–2). When the Emperor realises that the rod belongs to the beautiful young Sissi, he gets out of his horse wagon and suggests going on a detour with her on his own and without his entourage, to “show her the beautiful natural environment of Bad Ischl”2 (image 3). For comic effect, the police officer Major Bockl, played by Josef Meinrad, follows his Emperor in secret as he suspects Sissi to be a potential terrorist. In this scene, the beauty of the Salzkammergut landscape functions as a backdrop to both the romantic storyline, as Franz Joseph makes a point of showing the stunning nature to his new love interest, and of course also as a visual backdrop itself. But the beauty of Bad Ischl’s nature always remains connected to the characters, as we get to see very few establishing shots of the environment per se, but rather the characters are seamlessly built into the landscape, becoming one with it through the choice of colours as well as through the composition and camera movements. Indeed, after the “accidental” fishing encounter the future married couple meets again for an actual planned secret rendezvous (images 4–6), when Sissi recites poems for the Emperor and plays on the cittern, a popular instrument usually played by locals, as the young couple falls in love in front of the camera. The only witnesses are the quiet Ischler woods and some equally quiet deer passing by. What helped to create the feeling of falling in love is that Sissi was filmed with the soft pastel Agfacolors, unlike the strong Technicolor tone seen in the Hollywood films of the 1950s.

“THE WHITE HORSE INN” – A SEXIST, MUSICAL, COMEDY HEIMATFILM

The comedy musical The White Horse Inn, 19603 – which is famously set in a hotel by the same name at Lake Wolfgangsee that still exists today – follows in the footsteps of the romantic heimatfilm set in the Salzkammergut and even references Emperor Franz Joseph right from the get-go with the mention of the most prominent of all hotel rooms, the Emperor’s Room, where Franz Joseph himself resided. Even the boat that takes people over the lake is called the Kaiser Franz Joseph. In this romantic comedy, not just one but several couples fall in love against the backdrop of the beautiful location, now shot in strong Technicolor. One of them is Klärchen Hinzelmann (“little Klara” played by Estella Blain4) and Sigismund Sülzheimer (played by famous comic actor Gunther Philipp), a man who is easily old enough to be her father. The two fall in love against the backdrop of the lake and its holy church reflection (image 7). Another love story happens when the character of Dr. Otto Siedler (Adrian Hoven) falls in love at first sight with Brigitte Giesecke, daughter of Wilhelm Giesecke, a wealthy manufacturer and Dr. Siedler’s business arch enemy. Like Sissi and Franz Joseph on their Ischl-adventure, the couple is pictured amid the mountainous and architectural environment of the Salzkammergut, out of which – despite the “enemy business ties” – they receive nature’s blessing, mirrored by the colours of their costumes (images 8–9).

For the era in question, the 1960s, sexism is often the source of comedy in The White Horse Inn. When Klärchen, who only ever goes by her belittling diminutive, warns Sigismund, “if you try to kiss me, you will see what happens,” he answers, “That’s exactly what I want.” Comedy effect is also added by Klärchen’s father, the character of Wilhelm Giesecke (Erik Jelde). The Berliner climbs up the Schafberg in lederhosen, arriving out of breath. When he encounters a woman in a typical Austrian dress whose hat looks like it’s part of the high-alpine landscape (see image 10), she points out the beauty of the lakes to him, to which he responds with sarcasm, “You think I climbed up here to admire the beauty down there?”

Just like in the Sissi-trilogy, the landscape adorns the characters’ dramatic and funny lines, folklore is often featured in a populist fashion. For instance, songs and folk dances are shot and edited in a way that is reminiscent of a Leni Riefenstahl propaganda aesthetic that glorified populism and the athlete’s body with a direct cinema technique (image 11). The main actor Peter Alexander, playing the role of waiter Leopold Brandmeyer who is desperately in love with his boss Josepha Vogelhuber (Waltraut Haas), is often shown with his sidekick, the waiter apprentice Franzl (Friethjof Vierock), called “Piccolo” (small one). When Piccolo tells Leopold that Mrs. Vogelhuber is in love with Dr. Siedler, the latter is deeply disappointed and asks: “What does a hotel owner want with a lawyer?” The answer Piccolo gives, looking up at his boss, reflects their relationship of submission and admiration through the silhouette of the lake and the mountains (image 12): “That would almost be against the racial laws.” Here, the Salzkammergut becomes the witness to the normality with which the repression culture of post-war Austria dealt with racism and antisemitism.

“At the White Horse Inn at Lake Wolfgangsee your luck is waiting outside the door,” says one of the famous musical gems from this legendary film. As Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann said in his remarks upon assuming his professorship in poetics in 2014, the problem with these post-war films and musicals is that they are almost more difficult to watch than Nazi propaganda films themselves. “We expect that war crimes will be silenced in propaganda films, but in these entertaining films from the post-war era, the repression becomes active and brings to the forefront the ‘grotesque face of insanity’.”5

A SOAP OPERA AS AN EPIGONE OF A HEIMATFILM

During its three seasons, the Austrian-German soap opera Schlosshotel Orth, filmed between 1996 and 2004 mainly in Gmunden on Lake Traunsee, used many different Salzkammergut locations besides Gmunden, including Attersee. There is no doubt that this soap opera stands on the shoulders of its famous predecessors. In the first episode of the show, Christine, the hotel owner’s wife, kisses her youngest son on his forehead, proud and moved that he is in love for the first time, a romantic statement that is witnessed by the romantic representation of the lake in the background (image 13). (Christine will later die in a fatal mountain accident at the end of this episode). Sky du Mont’s character, the fancy hotel guest Mr. Bodin, and Ricci Hohlt’s character, his attractive wife Gundel Bodin,...