Klimt & Schiele: Eros and Psyche

Vienna, 1918. Austria-Hungary is coming apart and the city's golden age is closing. Gustav Klimt dies in February; at the end of October his student and friend Egon Schiele dies of Spanish flu. Schiele is twenty-eight, and three days earlier the same epidemic took his pregnant wife Edith. Michele Mally's documentary looks at that final year: Schiele's first major exhibition in the Secession building, the way Klimt had changed what art felt like at the turn of the century, and the relationship between teacher and pupil. It works through close views of the paintings and archive footage of the Vienna of the period. A calm, informative piece of art history.