Summary
Vienna, 1915: a city corseted by protocol yet electric with whispers of modernity. In this crucible, two brothers—one a sabre-scarred hussar, the other a pacifist lithographer—orbit the same woman, a war-widowed cabaret chanteuse whose wardrobe is stitched from the flags of fallen empires. While the soldier rides east toward the Carpathian snows, clutching a lock of her hair beneath a tunic heavy with medals, the artist forges propaganda posters that will later plaster his sibling’s face across the city like a secular icon. Between them, the woman stages private revolutions in smoke-choked cellar clubs, rewriting lyrics so that every waltz becomes a clandestine requiem for the living. Letters cross frontlines soaked in mud and blood; each envelope carries not ink but morphine, pressed violets, and tiny maps sketched on cigarette paper. When the lithographer is conscripted to sketch battlements for the General Staff, he discovers his brother’s silhouette in reconnaissance photographs—alive, barely—framed by the skeletal ribs of a destroyed bell tower. In desperation he counterfeits orders, rerouting munitions trains toward a field hospital instead of an artillery dump, an act that will echo through courts-martial and ballroom scandals alike. The film’s climactic reel unfurls inside a derelict palace requisitioned for a victory gala: chandeliers dimmed to wartime half-light, orchestra reduced to a single battered violin. Here the woman performs in a gown of reclaimed parachute silk; as she sings, the fabric catches on a candelabrum and unfurls like surrender. Brothers meet under the gaze of generals who once toasted their bloodline; a pistol is passed like a love letter. Yet the shot fired is not into flesh but into the frescoed ceiling, bringing down a plaster empire of cherubs and eagles. In the settling dust, the three lovers walk out into a city no longer imperial but not yet republic—snow beginning to fall, erasing regimental colors, leaving only the monochrome possibility of starting over.
Review Excerpt
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The first thing you notice is the texture of the print itself—nitrate emulsion spider-webbed like cracked porcelain, so that every close-up seems flayed. When Viktoria Pohl-Meiser’s irises burn toward the camera, the damage around her becomes a halo, as though the medium itself were hemorrhaging. This is not archival decay; it is the film admitting it cannot contain her.
Jacob and Luise Fleck wrote the scenario in feverish tandem during the July crisis, yet the script feels post-war in its ma..."
