Ep. 7: Austria, March 1917

Matinee Idyll

New member
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After they screened 'Curse of the Jackal' here in Australia, I didn't see any more Young Indy for several years. I'm not sure why, but I was only 6 or 7 when Jackal screened - so I probably wasn't keeping up on things.

Anywho, when I was in Grade 5 I checked the TV guide for a Saturday morning - and there was Young Indiana Jones! I had to play football that morning, but mother taped it for me. I arrived home, and had my head blown by this amazing piece of television...

Now, I hadn't seen The Third Man at this point, and had no noir filmic reference points at this young age - but bloody heck was this nerve-rackin' exciting television! All that exciting stuff on the train, and hell when he's running across the train and those Austrian Secret Policemen are shooting at him through the roof - who said this show had no freakin' action!? A bunch of twonks, that's who.

Really intruiging and suspenseful, Some great comedic moments ("Mmm! These are yummy!") and everything is fabulous, love the lighting during the running street scenes, neat little guest performance from Christopher Lee as the Count, the weight on the Emperors shoulders is really excellently handled.

So much to love - it's all so awesome. And once again, George screws it up by sticking "Russia" after it - the Amazon comments say it all.

This first half of the movie is good and has a lot of suspense. But once they get to Austria and Indy is re-assigned to Russia, the plot falls apart. It gets very confusing, and character development is underdone. There is some guy that is chasing Indy throughout the first half of the movie, and we never know who he really is. And then suddenly Indy is friends with some people in Russia, and we don't know how they came to be friends. It sort of clears up at the end when the Bolsheviks march through the streets of St. Petersburg, but even then, it is still confusing.

The St. Petersberg episode functioned perfectly on its own, because we were joining Indy in the middle of it - and he'd already made friends with Sergei et al - in this new context it's completely random and out of nowhere. We suddenly cut to Indy in Russia, and he's friends with a group of Bolsheviks. Ridiculous George!!!

Anywho, this is about Austria - And how great it is.

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Jooones!

New member
Yup you're right, great episode, I like the relation of the two noble youths to Indy how they at first make fun of him and then he even saves their lifes, also again the casting is great: Count Czernin, Emperor Karl I and also the monocle wearing bulldog faced secret police guy looks cool...
 

Matinee Idyll

New member
It's curious, I can say pretty objectively that there hasn't been a bad episode yet, and we've gone through 8. High quality stuff if y'ask me.
 

Sven

New member
I think you guys may know that the secret mission of the princes to the Austrian emperor had a true background but if not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixtus_Affair

In opposite to other episodes the actors haven't any similarity to their historic pendants but this may be artistic freedom. Actually I'm researching for a copy of the original Sixtus letter for my YI diary project. A friend of mine (a historian) is helping me but actually he's too busy for a first result.

The episode in Vienna is a kind of confusing cause the intentions of the Secret Police are a little bit indifferent. Emperor Karl's fears for continuity of the Austrian monarchy were justified cause the end of the war was also the end of the monarchy in Austria and Germany. In a special way one of the cast had an influence of my life. In a short scene the emperor's kids are playing in the park of the castle. The boy must have been Karl's oldest son, Crown Prince Otto. The actor boy was a little bit too old (Otto was born in November 1912) but: Otto von Habsburg is still alive and was the initiator of the so-called "Pan-European Picnic" at the Austrian-Hungarian border in summer 1989, an important part of the political changes in that year cause some hundreds of East Germans used the Picnic for an escape to the freedom. Without all these developments I wouldn't be here with you... ;)

Read more about the event here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-European_Picnic

Back to the episode. A little fact I was very excited about was the friendly "Farewell" of the leading secret agent to Indy. Austrians are believed to be very charming and polite and even they were enemies this nice touch of respect was very impressing.

The Petrograd part...well, here the bookends are really badly missed cause it does introduce so many facts. Besides the friendship to the Bolsheviks the main information: the action isn't a part of the famous Russian Revolution in fall of 1917 but of the July Days.

But two of the better spy episodes... (y)
 

tupogirl

New member
Sven, thank you so much for sharing that info!

May I ask what your diary project involves?

I am starting a project (a book would be the end goal) on the Peace Builders of WWI, inspired partly by this board, and the Sixtus Affair is something I want to research and feature.

The Austrian and Russian episodes are two of my favorites, although I agree that Russia suffers without the bookends. The Russian episode sparked my love of Russia and I've read countless books and daydream about visiting.
 

Sven

New member
tupogirl said:
May I ask what your diary project involves?

Of course! ;)

Well, I'm trying to write a YI diary including the original pages seen in the episodes plus inserts (letters, flyers and so on) and all the stuff which is according to the Indana Jones time line. But I have a lack of free time - it could be a project for years... ;)
 

phantom train

New member
Yes, "Austria, March 1917" is a superb episode, and IMHO this is one of the episodes that works better standing alone (as it was when I originally saw this on TV back in the early '90's). Great chase scenes, good comedy, etc. IMHO this series was strongest in the WWI episodes, and this was definitely one of the better ones.
 

Sven

New member
Sven said:
The episode in Vienna is a kind of confusing cause the intentions of the Secret Police are a little bit indifferent. Emperor Karl's fears for continuity of the Austrian monarchy were justified cause the end of the war was also the end of the monarchy in Austria and Germany. In a special way one of the cast had an influence of my life. In a short scene the emperor's kids are playing in the park of the castle. The boy must have been Karl's oldest son, Crown Prince Otto. The actor boy was a little bit too old (Otto was born in November 1912) but: Otto von Habsburg is still alive and was the initiator of the so-called "Pan-European Picnic" at the Austrian-Hungarian border in summer 1989, an important part of the political changes in that year cause some hundreds of East Germans used the Picnic for an escape to the freedom. Without all these developments I wouldn't be here with you... ;)

Read more about the event here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-European_Picnic

Today Otto von Habsburg died at the age of 98. R.I.P. and thank you for everything... :(
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Bump

Sven said:
Emperor Karl's fears for continuity of the Austrian monarchy were justified cause the end of the war was also the end of the monarchy in Austria and Germany.
Old Indy talks about this in the bookends for the original episode but the information is lost in "Adventures of the Secret Service".

On a related note:
A few days ago, I was in the Imperial Carriage Museum at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and it had the car which Emperor Karl used on his way to exile in Switzerland, 1919. The Austrian Imperial Court began using automobiles in 1909. This one is a 1914 Gräf & Stift and the only, known, surviving car of the fleet. Top speed: 90km/h (56 mph). The licence plate is the royal coat-of-arms. The body is WOOD.

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Anyway, I re-watched the episode before my trip and just fell in love with it all over again. As usual, the music is fantastic and one shot in particular has SPF looking a heck of a lot like the Indy of the films! The "Third Man"-inspired foot chase is my favourite part and I just realized that one of the reasons why the action scenes are so good is because Vic Armstrong was director.

Sometime in the near future, I'll be uploading the deleted scenes of "Austria, March 1917". :)
 

Sven

New member
Hi there, it's have been a long time... ;-)

Some weeks ago I had a nice conversation by e-mail with the German author Hans von Trotha who published a novel about the events of that episode last year. He is the great-grandson of the Austrian Foreign Minister Count Ottokar von Czernin, played in the show by Christopher Lee.

Of course I asked him if he know that Young Indy episode and he still has a copy on an old video tape! But he told me that the real events were really different to the episode plot. I asked him about the actual location of some documents and other stuff - quite interesting!

However, this is his book:

http://www.amazon.de/Czernin-lernte...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1392511910&sr=1-1

Its title means: "Czernin or how I learned to understand World War I"

BTW: Please let me introduce my blog about my YIJ collection, new entries soon! ;)

http://missingremy.wordpress.com/
 
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