Austria (1964)

this is a focus leader movies look like this soundtracks sounds like so focus leader first set your lens so that these lines are sharp and clear on all parts of the screen now set the volume control on your projector the sound level should be adjusted until my voice can be clearly understood in all sections of the room you are now ready to participate in another pan-american travel adventure [Music] it's so easy now just wait till they open the door step out and look to see if you have friends to meet you not a thought for the hundreds or the thousands of miles that lie behind you the great mountain ranges the lakes or the oceans so you are a member of that privileged group the travelers of the mid twentieth century to whom the mud and the cold the hunger and fatigue of earlier generations are at the most a memory and to the younger travelers a passage from the history books [Music] and yet the magic of new places and new people of unfamiliar sights and sounds loses nothing for not having been earned by hardship and tedium for the great cities of the world below their outer layer of everyday living cannot conceal the adventure that is history and of all the cities in the world there is only one the very name of which is music Vienna by the waters of a Blue Danube [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the city that gives Johann Strauss equal statuary honor with Mozart and with Beethoven cannot be unaware of elegance even in its more commercial forms and although the waltzes and the hisses have receded a little behind the baroque facades of Vienna the V&A is conscious of the values of her bein and sophisticated living as wherever their grandparents [Music] it is by no means only the very young who take the art of the Viennese pastry cook seriously because at his best he is an artist who compels attention from all age groups and whose influence has spread outward from Vienna to every city in the world but seldom without losing something in the long journey from the banks of the Danube so it is still to Vienna that the devotees of cream and pastry braving the worst that calories and carbohydrates can do make their way in respectful pilgrimage [Music] as evening falls and the lights come on one by one the ghosts of the Imperial City begin to stir again and it seems scarcely fanciful to think that all around us there are Emperor's and Archduke's great ladies and gay hisses who behind their marble monuments hear the distant sound of gypsy violins calling from the wine gardens of green sing [Music] the tranzalpine Express pulls out of Vienna every day for the mountains of the West and the traveler who has slipped too far into a sentimental dream of imperial Vienna is jerked back into the 20th century by this most modern and unsentimental of trains [Music] for the motorists to the best roads lead westward and every year tens of thousands of them had for the world-famous lakeside resort of st. Wolf's gun sometimes one hears the expression this is pure musical company well this is pure musical comedy the only resort in the world catapulted into international fame by a musical company that world's success of pre-war days the white horse in but the old in and the exquisite lakeside village had what it takes to keep the visitors lured to it by the songs in the scenery of that other white horse in and now in and village Lake and lakeside together form the most famous and most visited of all the holiday spots of Upper Austria not even the lederhosen and the rustic crafts seem out of place alongside the white horse hidden for the magic of this place is that it doesn't have to dress up for the tourists it is already and always has been dressed up for itself [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Austria has a strange capacity to give its own personality to imported sports and whether it be waterskiing on the lakes of the salt scammer group or golf in the wide valley of the in the magic touch of Austria makes every sport and every sportsman at home it is the mountains that do it the ever-present glint of Sun on snow and the loom of blue shadows up against the sky for in Carinthia and in tirol for albergue and Styria Salzkammergut and southward it is against the mountains that the works of man in RC and of these works of man none is greater than the city of Salzburg on its winding river where the mountains sink into the rolling hills of Bavaria birthplace of Mozart capital city of the prince-archbishops festival city of European music Salzburg can reel off her honours like the titles of a ruling monarch a monarch not perhaps for musical comedy but a happy rather worldly ruler from some unwritten opera Mozart [Music] oh this is an ancient city a beautiful and cultured city but it is also very much the city of the holidaymaker and everything that can be done for him is done in no mean measure [Music] [Applause] [Music] still within salzburg province but worlds away from the sophisticated creations of the prince-archbishops the church has adapted a very ancient custom to fit the Christian calendar and every year as June comes round the little mountain village of Seder house bursts into flour with its unique and attractively named precession of the poles of glory [Music] westward again the road leads through the cornfields towards the alpine territory of taro where the great mountains move in an either side of the road and a castle above the highway can dominate a province the castle of Ambrose near Innsbruck is famous for its painted chimney pots as much as for any warlike record because the original structure was totally destroyed during the Middle Ages and rebuilt during the 17th century as a great house rather than as a fortress painting the walls of their houses has long been a custom of the two rollers and to it we owe not only some most attractive village scenes but also a record of national civic religious and sporting history which might otherwise have perished the methods of hunting may have changed a little but the lure of the chase survives [Music] hi in the Tyrolean foothills the castle of bitter has been converted from a Spartan sanctuary from foreign invaders to a place of safety from the assaults of modern life in short a hotel and a very comfortable and well-equipped hotel at that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it is a major tribute to the hospitality of the mountain hotel that this couple are still on speaking terms after that brutal assault by the swimming pool but who could resist the combined forces of mountain air of corn gold hair and a chef from Vienna by way of Paris [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Innsbruck the bridge on the in is part market town and part Royale capital for the Empress Maria Theresa has left her name for this street and the mark of her affection for the Baroque all over the Tyrolean capital and 250 years before her the emperor maximilian the first erected that celebrated flight of fancy the golden roof of Innsbruck [Music] even the Italian influences that streamed over the Brenner pass and the Renaissance were softened and made homely by Tyrolean window boxes and maria theresa's noble street is dwarfed by the great mountains at its end in the steep valleys of tiro where the mountains press almost into the very streets of the capital the way to the countryside lies up and in summer the cable railways open the way to the wildflowers and the alpine meadows just as in winter they carry a visitor and townsman alight to the great snow fields of Turin [Music] [Applause] [Music] westward for the last time and Turrell gives place to the four out there the last province of Austria hemmed in by Germany Switzerland and Liechtenstein where the seasons go their way as they have always gone and where they apples of autumn mean that the cattle are down from the high pastures and that it's time to cut wood for the winter this is a peaceful land remote from the capital city at the other end of the country and untroubled by the friendly frontier is just over the hill but even here the new roads are coming and the automobile and the holidaymaker with them [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] traveling the length of this lovely land of Austria through the great cities of our history and under and around the mountains it is hard to believe that there can be wonder still unseen yet every year is the first snows of winter start to glitter in the mountains some Austria proves again that for all the beauty of her summers there is a new and marvelous Austria that those who have seen only her Green Meadows and wildflowers can hardly imagine a glitter with frost and a flame with white snow fields under a sky of azure blue [Music]