Maskerade

Maskerade (also known as Maskerade in Wien, or Masquerade in Vienna), is an Austrian operetta film, and a classic of German language cinema. The exceptional script of this, a great example of the genre of the Wiener Film, was by Walter Reisch and Willi Forst, who also directed. The German premiere was held in Berlin on 21 August 1934, the Austrian premiere in Vienna not until 26 September of the same year. Plot The film is set in Viennese high society of about 1900. After a masked carnival ball, Gerda Harrandt (Hilde von Stolz), wife of the surgeon Carl Ludwig Harrandt (Peter Petersen), allows the fashionable artist Ferdinand Heideneck (Adolf Wohlbrück) to paint a portrait of her wearing only a mask and a muff. This muff however belongs to Anita Keller (Olga Tschechowa), in secret the painter's lover but also the fiancée of the court orchestra director Paul Harrandt (Walter Janssen), the brother of Gerda's husband. The picture is published in the newspaper. When Paul sees it and asks Heideneck some searching questions about the identity of the model, the artist is forced to improvise a story and on the spur of the moment invents a woman called Leopoldine Dur as the alleged model. Leopoldine Dur however turns out to be a real woman (Paula Wessely), whose acquaintance Heideneck makes shortly afterwards. This makes his lover Anita so jealous that she shoots him. He survives, and Leopoldine nurses him back to health. The true identity of the sitter in the portrait remains a mystery, however. Background In February 1934, in the middle of the brief Austrian Civil War, Walter Reisch and Willi Forst wrote the screenplay of Maskerade in the Hotel Kranz-Ambassador in Vienna. Filming began in the same month in the Rosenhügel Film Studios of Sascha-Film. It was only the second film directed by Willi Forst, but is nevertheless one of his masterpieces. It was also the first film role for the distinguished stage actress Paula Wessely.