“Automobiles shot out of deep, narrow streets into the shallows of bright squares. Dark clusters of pedestrians formed cloudlike strings. Where more powerful lines of speed cut across their casual haste they clotted up, then trickled on faster and, after a few oscillations, resumed their hasty rhythm. Hundreds of noises wove themselves into a wiry texture of sound with barbs protruding here and there, smart edges running along it and subsiding again, with clear notes splintering off and dissipating. By this noise alone, whose special quality cannot be captured in words, a man returning after years of absence would have been able to tell with his eyes shut that he was back in the Imperial Capital and Royal City of Vienna. Cities, like people, can be recognized by their walk.”

- from The Man Without Quaities by Robert Musil, 1930.

I’ve never been to Vienna, but I’m sure much has been lost that can never be restored, even from the blasted postwar setting of The Third Man. I first saw it at a theater in Nice, where the French subtitles contributed nicely to the film’s atmosphere.