| Most locations were found
easily because of an email send to me by Toni from Finland.
He sent me this email with interesting facts about Billion
Dollar Brain locations. Some links are now unfortunately out of
order. The
only scenes filmed in Turku ( some 200 km west of Helsinki,
www.turku.fi
) seem to be those were the castle is seen. (Is Turku mentioned
specifically or is the castle just a generic one?)
http://www.turku.fi/museo/english/castle.htm
http://www.turkutouring.fi/matkailijalle_2.phtml?path=MATKAILIJALLE%2FN%E4ht%E4vyydet%2FMuseot&id=182&kieli=englanti
The Latvian town is
Porvoo ca 50 km east of Helsinki (
www.porvoo.fi
). This map (
http://helsinkiww.net/pmr/fin/aika2002.html#nahtavyydet
) of a museum railroad shows it nicely: the props (?) station
was at number 2 by the river (frozen and not seen clearly in the
shots) next to the bridge. "Vanha Porvoo" in the upper left
corner of the map is the old town with wooden houses were some
of the scenes were filmed. All other scenes I can identify were
filmed in or around Helsinki.
These locations include
Main Post Office (the tall yellow brick building), Stockmann
department store, Main Railway Station, Diana Park (the statue
of javelin throwing goddess in the chase scene,
http://www.taidemuseo.hel.fi/english/veisto/veistossivu.html?id=270&sortby=artist
), winter gardens (the bust seen in some of the shots is
probably this:
http://www.taidemuseo.hel.fi/english/veisto/veistossivu.html?id=93&sortby=artist
) .I've also identified some of the street views seen through
the rear window of Colonel Ross' car. They seem to drive past
the Soviet embassy! Locations worth more dwelling:
When Harry (or was it Anya) is hurrying to the railway station
the car races past a long warehouse and a large cube-like
building can be seen at the background. The building is the
parliament house (
http://www.eduskunta.fi/fakta/esite/esitt_06.htm
). Even the warehouse still remains in the central Helsinki
although there is a heated debate going on whether it should be
preserved or torn down. The Gallen-Kallela Museum has a web site
at
http://www.gallen-kallela.fi/english.html
.
The "Russian Church" is
Uspenski Cathedral. It is the largest Greek-Orthodox church in
western Europe. It can be seen in a picture on this page with
theEvangelic-Luthran Cathedral:
http://www.hel.fi/tourism/html/english/kuvagalleria/index.html.
On the same page there is also picture of the Töölönlahti Bay
seen from the side of Dr Kaarna's wooden villa (which still
remains). (A side step: "Kaarna" is a valid Finnish last name
meaning "wood bark"). Also the winter gardens are next to the
bay and it can be seen at the background in some of the gardens
scenes. The ferry Harry and Anya are taking is the regular ferry
servicing the islands of Suomenlinna fortress. The silhouette of
its church is seen in the fog in scene.
http://www.helsinginseurakunnat.net/cgi-bin/tuomiokirkko/kirkko_suomenlinna.cfm?idseurakunta=30
The villa Leo and Anya
are living in is the home and studio of Finnish artist Akseli
Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931). The villa is nowadays a museum and
open to the public. Some of the interior scenes were probably
filmed in the villa (it was designed as a painting studio with
large windows after all!), at least the
paintings on the walls are by AG-K. Some of the paintings are
visible also in the "making the love scene" picture on your site
("Behind the scenes" section - ed.). |
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