Bruce Loeb on Piano Preceded by: The End of a Love Affair (Konec milovani): Scandal and people are propelled with the same fatal speed characteristic of modern times in this domestic melodrama dressed in the secessionist trappings of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is one of the few surviving titles from ASUM-Film, the leading pre-World War I Czech production company founded in 1912 by the husband-and-wife/ architect and actress team of Max Urban and Anna Sedlackova. Directed by Otakar Stafl, Max Urban. Photographed by Urban. (Czechoslovakia, 1913, 31 mins (18 fps), Silent with Czech intertitles, Live English translation, Piano accompaniment, Tinted, 35mm) Erotikon is a forerunner to Gustav Machaty's better known Ecstasy in its explicitly erotic theme and its portrayal of a complex modern heroine. The consequences of a night of unbridled passion between a provincial stationmaster's daughter (Ita Rina) and a Prague playboy who is forced to stay the night after missing a train are examined, in a more-or-less conventional moral tale that pits country innocence against city decadence and dutifully comes out for family values. But Machaty's flair for stylized eroticism, and the heroine's insistent flaunting of sexual mores (even after having been sent off to have her illegitimate child), remaining sympathetic throughout, suffuse the film with a tense sensuality, and offer a subtle and even sly analysis of male-female relationships.