The Enlightened Bourgeois

The film describes the development of the Art Nouveau movement in Brussels, Vienna and Germany and introduces the viewer to fascinating personalities - Horta, Hoffmann, Van de Velde, Ohlbrich, Mahler, Klimt and Schiele. We learn about their artistic and social ideals against the background of a society which is dominated by a bourgeoisie sometimes surprisingly enlightened, sometimes apathetic and hopelessly inured to its own prejudices. In some central European regions, the bourgeoisie mustered the courage to provide financial support for even the most outrageous avant-garde art. In other regions it tended to be conservative and conformist, although an active minority professed its adherence to an innovative socialism. Within this society, unrest of all types, social and individual, was seething - and aggravating this unrest came the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud.

Part of the series La Grande Epoque