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this time all three of us were more interested in exploring the seriousness of this story.
Josef Hader: If the film content calls for me to work with a little more intensity, then obviously
there's going to have to be that much less humor. In Silentium there are a lot of oppressive
scenes in which there's no way of putting in a joke or you'll ruin everything. That's why I would
say: the content challenged us to make Silentium more intense than Come, Sweet Death, and
that's why it ended up being less comic-book style. Or at least like a grown-up-style comic book.
Wolfgang Murnberger: If Come, Sweet Death was a bizarre detective movie, then Silentium is a
bizarre thriller.
Peter Krobath: Silentium takes us to Salzburg, to the hermetic microcosm of a small-town
metropolis, where besides the Catholic Church a whole different set of forces are at work ...
Wolf Hass: That's the common denominator with Come, Sweet Death. Both films take place in
hermetic microcosms because that's always a good setting for crime stories. It makes it easy to
create a closed atmosphere and trapped feeling. Just as the ambulance company in Come,
Sweet Death is its own little world, so too is the city of Salzburg, walled in by tall mountains. And
as far as humor is concerned, I don't agree that there's less of it in this film. It's just more harsh. In
Silentium we work with a form of comedy that can also hurt you.
Josef Hader: In a way Silentium is a kind of evil fairy tale. That there are mysterious things you
can't understand at first glance. That Salzburg is a secret world that operates according to its own
set of not immediately transparent rules. There's always a kind of enchanted forest where good
children tend to lose their way. We want to create suspense – without sacrificing the humor.
Peter Krobath: How do you explain Brenner's social decline?
Wolfgang Murnberger: Maybe we subconsciously told ourselves as a contrast to high culture and
Catholicism it might be nice to have him as down-and-out as you can get.
Josef Hader: In Come, Sweet Death Brenner was part of the scene. He had a certain social
standing, whereas now he's been thrown into a world where everyone is much higher up than he
is. Most of the people he deals with in Silentium, his main adversaries, so to speak, are all much
higher on the social totem pole than Brenner. Not only is Brenner not on the same page as them,
he's not even in the same book, that's why the contrast is so extreme. Come, Sweet Death takes
place in Viennese middle class society, he knew his way around there. But now he's in a world
where he's the absolute dregs at every function, no matter what the occasion, he's the low man.
Peter Krobath: That kind of thing can happen fast in Salzburg ...
Wolf Haas: That's how I experienced it. I didn't move from Salzburg to Vienna until after I'd
finished my studies, and the main impression I got was that in Vienna if you're at a certain low
level, you're just poor, whereas in Salzburg at the same level you're already on skid row. It's a
different scale of contrast. If the whole world is so rich and posh, a lot of people are going to look
like beggars by comparison.
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