Wow! Such a good movie.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

What I thought I'd see was a tight spy thriller. What I got was something like a step barely above a Barry Newman TV show. It is all shot in Salzberg, Austria and the scenery is perhaps this films most impressive asset. The script and story are slow and plodding.Anna Karina is here a lot, but the script gives her little to make an impression. Of course, Newman does not get a lot from it either. Karen Jensen does not get a lot of script, but the camera makes her figure look like it was ready for prime time in 1972. Amazingly this beauty did not get a lot of exposure.The plot is a box of Nazi papers naming people responsible for some of the horrible things Nazis did during the war. The information is not easy to get, and there are a lot of curves and people after this box. Not a great film, very dull, and it should have been done better.

Very confusing film.If it weren't for the fact that the film takes place after the war, you would recognize the scenery of the buildings in Austria just before the Anschluss of 1938 shown in the wonderful "The Sound of Music."Everyone is after a box filled with names of Nazi collaborators during the war, many of whom could resurface should Nazism ever attempt to take hold once again.The problem with the film is that there are so many sides that you begin to lose track of which side the individuals are.You know you're in for a bumpy ride when both the photographer and the one who allegedly paid him money for the photographs both wind up dead within the first 10 minutes of the film. The bodies invariably begin to pile up.You just don't know or understand where Klaus Maria Brandauer is coming from.

The Salzburg Connection is based on a novel by Helen MacInnes, and is a rather unoriginal spy thriller with the usual ingredients that characterise practically all early '70s movies within the genre: a convoluted plot, double-crosses, triple-crosses, characters with secrets, and attractive European settings. Barry Newman is actually rather good in the leading role, and is nicely supported by the gorgeous Anna Karina.American lawyer William Mathison (Barry Newman) is vacationing in Switzerland when he is asked by an American publishing firm to go to Salzburg, Austria, to contact a photographer who has written a book about Austrian lakes. Mathison immediately realises that something is amiss when he reaches the photographer's small Salzburg shop and finds the photographer missing, and his anxious wife Anna Bryant (Anna Karina) being protected with near-claustrophobic zeal by her brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandeur). Johann initially suspects that Mathison is a secret agent and refuses to give him any information. Gradually, though, Mathison realises that Anna's husband has been murdered, having found a chest in an Austrian lake containing a list of Nazi collaborators from WWII. Agents from all over the world, including Russia, Israel, Germany, Austria and America, want to get hold of the chest. Mathison finds himself playing a delicate game of cat-and-mouse, in which he can trust virtually no-one, such as KGB sex-pot Elisa Lang (Karen Jensen) who attempts to seduce him by posing as a free-wheeling American tourist, and elderly Austrian Felix Zauner (Wolfgang Preiss), whose name is on the list because he collaborated with the Nazis during the war in order to save the life of his wife.The film could've been pretty good, but it misses rather too many opportunities. Newman and Karina, as I've already said, are quite good, and Jensen as the KGB lady-spy also registers well. Furthermore, the locations are pleasing to the eye. But other than these scant positives, the film is a somewhat poor affair. Lee H. Katzin directs sloppily, far too frequently punctuating his movie with gimmicky editing techniques such as meaningless freeze-frames and unnecessary slow motion sequences. Katzin also ruins several key scenes by failing to make it clear quite what's going on (e.g. the finale, in which Newman and Preiss approach an abandoned gunnery post on a mountainside, is terribly rushed and seems to make little sense). At a mere 93 minutes, the film tries to cram in a heck of a lot of plotting and counter-plotting, yet too many of the characters are so hurriedly introduced that it's hard to remember who they are or what agency they work for. One scene that I DID like, however, involved Karina being kidnapped by spies and whisked away in their car. Newman - a veteran of earlier car chase movies - takes a shortcut in his own car and manages to get in front of the baddies. In a clever twist on the traditional concept of a car chase, he slows down their getaway by driving so SLOWLY that the police eventually turn up to find out who's holding up the traffic! A rare ingenious moment in an otherwise dull potboiler.

After 'Vanishing Point' and 'Fear Is the Key,' Barry Newman is involved in another auto-chase, but this time with a distinct difference... The baddies, not strictly gangsters but hoodlums with Nazi connections, have kidnapped Anna Karina for some dirty purpose and are driving away with her through busy city streets...Newman, an American lawyer on holiday in Salzburg, finds himself suspected by spies of both sides... He chases the kidnap-car by continually managing to get in front of it (the high speed scenes), then slowing down to cause a traffic jam and attract the attention of the police...Klaus Maria Brandauer makes his film debut here, before his appearance in 'Mephisto,' Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Film in 1981...