On Loca­tion: The foot­bridge from Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise

Richard Linklater’s ​‘Before’ tril­o­gy is as much about places as it is about the peo­ple who explore them. All three of the films act as a map­ping of their respec­tive set­tings – Vien­na, Paris and the Pelo­pon­nese penin­su­la – as much as unfold­ing dra­mas fol­low­ing two cen­tral characters.

In spite of these films seem­ing to be built on impro­vi­sa­tion and chance, the dra­mas are metic­u­lous in their exe­cu­tion, in par­tic­u­lar pay­ing atten­tion to unique coin­ci­dences and sym­bol­ism between the dis­cus­sions and the wan­der­ings. The first film in the tril­o­gy, Before Sun­rise, is the most overt in this sense, using the city of Vien­na as a spring­board to show­case the ear­ly blos­som­ing of the rela­tion­ship at the heart of the films.

The film begins the sto­ry of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy), whose chance con­ver­sa­tion on a train from Budapest to Vien­na sparks an on-off rela­tion­ship that unfurls over sev­er­al decades and two sub­se­quent films, Before Sun­set and Before Mid­night. Con­vinc­ing Céline to get off the train with him and spend a night ambling around the Aus­tri­an cap­i­tal, the cou­ple explore ran­dom­ly and become more attached as the streets pass by under their feet.

In the evening, we fol­low the char­ac­ters in the phys­i­cal sense through a vari­ety of Vien­nese loca­tions, and in the con­ver­sa­tion­al sense as we learn about their lives and their desires. Jesse is escap­ing the mem­o­ries of a crum­bled rela­tion­ship with a woman now liv­ing in Spain, while Céline is equal­ly sev­er­al months gone from a breakup with a tem­pera­men­tal Parisian artist.

Tak­ing his cues from Éric Rohmer’s mean­der­ing, con­ver­sa­tion­al films, Lin­klater explores the city of Vien­na in an incred­i­bly nat­u­ral­is­tic way. Unlike the oth­er two films in the tril­o­gy, there’s an overt sense of chance hang­ing over the whole film: the chance that their city sojourn coin­cides with ​‘Blooms­day’, the day of James Joyce’s ​‘Ulysses’; the chance encoun­ters with strangers that tell unusu­al­ly of the couple’s future in hind­sight; and the chance of hap­pen­ing upon oth­er film loca­tions, notably from Car­ol Reed’s The Third Man includ­ing that film’s Fer­ris wheel and the door where Har­ry Lime (Orson Welles) first appears.

A plain but sur­pris­ing­ly piv­otal loca­tion in Before Sun­rise arrives ear­ly on in the form of a foot­bridge, not long after Céline and Jesse decide to spend the day togeth­er. The bridge feels heav­i­ly weighed by the chances tak­en on the film’s jour­ney. The train that Céline could have stayed on is implied (through edit­ing rather than real­i­ty), to pass under it as if the view­er sees the chance life she nar­row­ly missed mov­ing off and away from the present. It’s a telling loca­tion as the bridge is real­ly two com­bined; one for pedes­tri­ans – the more inter­est­ing jour­ney like that of the film – and one for trains – the sim­ple way from A to B.

The pair even com­ment on the bridge’s wood­en struc­ture as they walk over it: ​“This is a nice bridge.” It’s a dis­trac­tion from the unusu­al­ness of their sit­u­a­tion, unsure as to what might hap­pen in the 24 hours they have in the city and why they both felt this was the right choice.

The bridge in ques­tion is the Zol­lamtssteg, con­nect­ing Reis­chachstraße and Vordere Zol­lamtsstraße over the water of the Wien­flusse. The rail­way bridge was designed by the not­ed archi­tect Otto Wag­n­er and the foot­bridge by Mar­tin Paul. The design seems piv­otal for the sym­bol­ic use in the film as the char­ac­ters can earnest­ly watch the train under­neath, wit­ness­ing a poten­tial, less excit­ing future van­ish before their eyes into a tun­nel and beyond.

It’s a visu­al image that’s used to open the shot, as if we’re then fol­low­ing a new jour­ney, a much slow­er but more mean­ing­ful mean­der on foot with two peo­ple rather than the lone­ly trav­ellers sep­a­rat­ing. They get talk­ing to their first Aus­tri­ans on this bridge, two ama­teur actors per­form­ing in a play near the Prater. The whole sce­nario feels as if it’s the begin­ning of some­thing; see­ing a new city and the cast­ing off of old lives.

The real-life loca­tion retains the same refresh­ing­ly feel­ing. The bridge on my vis­it gleamed equal­ly in that same soft sun­light from Linklater’s film, walk­ing a few min­utes through the beau­ti­ful gar­dens of the Stadt­park in search of it. There was only a street sweep­er brush­ing leaves off the wood­en boards on the vis­it rather than actors sell­ing their show but, like so much of the city cen­tre, the build­ings all around are entire­ly pre­served and intact.

Unlike the Céline and Jesse, I took an actu­al pho­to­graph; a Polaroid rather than a men­tal pic­ture to remem­ber the day. Equal­ly in keep­ing with the film, it felt right to wait for one of the trains to come by. I hadn’t ven­tured on some new, excit­ing romance but feel­ing the poten­tial of anoth­er, less excit­ing life trav­el­ling on under the bridge felt unusu­al­ly cathar­tic. Like Jesse and Céline, I was glad to be stood on top, watch­ing it pass by and away.