Vienna - The Mask of Gold
A personal documentary written and presented by Michael Frayn
At the turn of the century, Vienna was still one of the world's great Imperial capitals. In the decade before the Great War, ideas were born in the city that have stamped themselves upon the whole 20th century.
In a sequel to his highly praised film about Imperial Berlin, playwright, novelist and journalist MICHAEL FRAYN explores the cultural legacy of those years. Behind the uniforms and rigid moral codes of court life, he examines the new world that was being born - the erotic world of the painters Klimt and Schiele, the world of the unconscious mapped by Freud and the playwright Schnitzler, the new musical worlds of Mahler and Schoenberg. But the golden mask of Viennese culture in the 1900s concealed a sure and growing knowledge that the world was about to disintegrate, leaving nothing of the Empire that stretched from Poland to the Adriatic but heavy architecture, tourist attractions and a nostalgia for past greatness.
Film cameraman PETER BARTLETT Film editor JOHN NEEDHAM Executive producer BILL MORTON
Producer DENNIS marks