Starring: Sarah Drew and Brennan Elliott

Released: 2020

Summary: A concert violinist decides to travel to Vienna for a performance, and she finds the inspiration she felt she had been missing while also coming across a new love.

Christmas in Vienna stars Sarah Drew & Brennan Elliott. Image: Crown Media

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Viewers Take A Virtual Trip To Vienna

Christmas in Vienna allowed viewers who were stuck at home and hesitant to travel during the middle of a pandemic to go to someplace extra special for the holidays.

If you were impressed by Vienna’s outdoor Christmas markets and festive lights and decorations, you might find it interesting that Hallmark had nothing to do with it! The movie was filmed leading up to Christmas, so Vienna was already decked out, and it even snowed while they filmed the Ferris wheel scene. The authenticity adds a greater depth to the movie.

The architectural wonders of Vienna were stunning, including St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We received a mini history lesson, too. We learned Franz Joseph Haydn was a choir boy at the cathedral. Who’s Haydn? He was a famous Austrian composer who was “instrumental” in developing chamber music, which was classical music “composed” of only a few instruments so they could be played in a large room rather than a music hall. Mozart even applied for a music director position at the cathedral a few months prior to his death.

Another historical wonder we glimpsed was the oldest running Ferris wheel in the world–the Wiener Riesenrad–built in 1897.

The Wiener Riesenrad is located inside the Wurstelprater Amusement Park.

Though most of the movie was shot in Vienna, it finished filming in Bucharest.

Another Movie About Finding Inspiration

A common Hallmark movie theme centers around a character losing their inspiration and then finding it again when the love bug bites. Whether it’s a songwriting struggle, like in A Country Wedding and Country at Heart, losing the enthusiasm for marketing like in Romance in the Air, or a novelist’s writer’s block like in Just My Type, love is always the secret to unstopping the dam to creativity.

After spending time and celebrating the season with Mark Olsen (Elliott) and his three children, Jess Waters (Drew) finds her heart for music again. Even though she planned to perform her final concert in Vienna before quitting the business for good, she decided to stay and play in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Finding love rekindled her passion for the violin.

How does Jess eat so many sweets and stay skinny?

It really looked like Sarah Drew played the violin in this movie, didn’t it? Drew was determined to look like a real violinist so she Skyped with violinist and composer, Nathalie Bonin, from her bathroom. She rehearsed three hours every day to make sure her bow was at the right string for every note. It worked!

The Best Movie Line

Jess shared her parents’ favorite saying, and it was one of the best lines in the movie:

Love is learning the song in someone’s heart and singing it when they need it most.

Mark allows himself to be “vulnerable” when he’s with Jess by sharing things with her he doesn’t share with anyone else.

We might refer to this as knowing someone’s love language, based on the book, The Five Love Languages, which explains how to identify your partner’s love language and then learn to “speak” it so they feel and experience your love in a way that is most meaningful to them.

Four Keys To Finding The Perfect Gift For Everyone On Your List

Some families like to create “wish lists,” which makes them really easy to shop for because you are guaranteed to buy them a gift they want.

For those who don’t make lists, finding the perfect gift can be tricky.

Jess has mastered the art of selecting the best gift for everyone on her list, and she shares her secret.

The perfect gift has to have these four attributes:

1. It must be personal.

2. It must be heart-felt.

3. It must be surprising.

4. The person never asked for it, but now can’t live without it.

Image: Crown Media

That is great advice. When one of my kids was little and still believed in Santa, she loved to leave Santa her wish list beside his cookies and milk. She once remarked, “Santa always gets me things that weren’t even on my list, but that I totally love!”

The better you know someone, the easier this is to do.

Jess ends up buying Summer a necklace just like her own, Julian a hat and hook so he has “some place to hang his hat,” a violin for little Isla, and a blanket for Mark–all are delighted by her perfect choices.

Christmas in Vienna was one of two Hallmark Christmas movies in 2020 to feature the violin, with the other being The Christmas Bow.