How a trip to Vienna changed life for Margaret Pomeranz

Vienna is a long way from Sydney's eastern suburbs, where Margaret Pomeranz—then known as Margaret Jones-Owen—endured 'a very cloistered upbringing' as an only child in middle-class, postwar Australia.

But it was in Vienna that Pomeranz, who would later become one of Australia's most loved film critics, found her life changing, after she travelled there as a university student in 1970.

'I was just inspired,' she says of the city's impact on her life. 'I was given confidence in my own abilities in a way I had never had before.'

Pomeranz ended up in Austria after what she describes as the 'most aberrant decision' she would ever make: learning German at university.

'I don't know why I did that, but it was the decision that really changed my life,' she says.

'I like languages. I'd done Latin and French at school. It's beautifully structured, German ... it's very Latin in its structure. It's a beautiful language—mathematical, lovely.'

She found the humanities more enjoyable than her original course of study at Sydney University, which she began after hearing that an economics degree would be more valuable.

'I was terribly naive ... I was amongst the first big intake of women into university,' she says.

'How wrong it was for me. I absolutely hated it, and I couldn't get out of it. I kept on passing subjects that were only suitable for economics and I desperately wanted to transfer to arts.

'I ended up teaching for a few years. I got posted to the country, and then when I came back to the city I decided that I wanted to continue my degree. Macquarie accepted all my subjects from Sydney into an arts degree, so I started on a very different course.'

Visiting a city full of extraordinary people

As an arts student, Pomeranz decided to take six months off and go to a German-speaking country to improve her conversation skills.

'I had a friend at university who said, "Go to Vienna, because the Viennese have a really lovely accent in German," which they do ... except for the people who deliver the coal, who I could never understand!'

The Austrian capital, like Berlin, had been divided in the wake of the Second World War, and in the '70s still bore scars of that time: 'It had all that pain and anguish of post-war Europe.'

The city was full of amazing experiences and extraordinary people. Pomeranz says one of those people—a man 29 years her senior—turned out to be 'one of the most significant men' in her life.

'[He was] a young communist in Vienna during the war. He'd been a dispatch rider in the Spanish Civil War. He'd been sent to Birkenau and somehow escaped,' she says.

'[He] then went to England, was sent to a logging camp in Canada because he was a communist, and then when Russia came into the war, he joined the French foreign legion.'

Memories of this one-time suitor have stuck around, and Pomeranz dreams of returning to Vienna to research and write his life story. Meanwhile, she still finds herself copying his habits.

'He was a most extraordinary man and he drove a sports car,' she says.

'I bought my first sports car in Europe and I swore that I would drive a sports car till I died. And I'm still doing it.'

A fateful chocolate cake delivery

She almost stayed in Vienna permanently, but her degree at Macquarie University was waiting for her—along with a filmmaker who liked chocolate cake.

'I wasn't going to come back. I came back only to finish my degree,' Pomeranz says.

'A friend asked me to bring a chocolate cake back to Australia for a cousin. You know how people say, "I've got a cousin living in Sydney, you've got to ring them," and you never feel impelled to? But if you're lugging this chocolate cake back, you've got to.

'That turned out to be Hans Pomeranz; the destination of the cake.'

In the '60s, Hans had established Spectrum Films, a post-production house for independent filmmakers in Sydney. By the time the cake arrived, he was in the thick of the burgeoning Australian film industry.

'I did finish my degree and married Hans,' Margaret says.

'It was just when the film industry was taking off in this country, and he had a post-production business, so that was really my immersion into the film industry in the '70s.

'I'd always loved the cinema. When I was growing up it was the one form of entertainment, the Saturday matinee. When I met Hans we went to films because of the director. I did get a film education through him. I just loved it and I wanted in.'

Read more: Data reveals Margaret and David's likes and dislikes

By 1980, Margaret was at SBS, where she would become a household name through her collaboration with David Stratton, before the pair moved to the ABC for 10 years. She now reviews films at Foxtel.

'I would hate to have a year where I wasn't impelled to go to the cinema. I love it,' she says.

She laughs when asked whether she'd still go to the movies if it wasn't her job. 'I think I'd still see 100 films a year, instead of the 300 to 400 I've been watching.'

Sunday Extra is RN’s live Sunday morning broadcast, looking to the week ahead and also incorporating Ockham’s Razor, Background Briefing, and First Dog on the Moon.