ABSTRACT
This chapter continues our ‘spatial turn’ and returns to Europe. We invoke theories of cinematic space, from Nowell-Smith's defence of location shooting to Antonie Gaudin's emphasis on the spectators’ experience, and of social and geographical space, especially Doreen Massey's view of places as an accumulation of ‘stories-so-far’. From this perspective, as Céline and Jesse ride the trains, walk through the streets of Vienna and casually acknowledge the presence of the river Danube, they conjure up an idea of Vienna that stands for the construction of the new Europe (Austria joined the EU in 1995, the year of the film's release). Yet, this is a Europe that builds its present on some of its pasts, particularly those that look beyond the nation. We follow the young protagonists on the train and think of the Erasmus generation and beyond, the revolution of the railways in the nineteenth century and their contribution to a cosmopolitan Europe and the multinational crucible of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Mitteleuropa . Inevitably, this is a pan-European sensibility that was not available to everybody in the nineteenth century and may continue to be restricted to a relatively small group of people, which Jesse and Céline also represent.
