Radetzky March is based on Joseph Roth's novel about the distintegration of the Austrian Empire as seen through the lives of a military family. Cameraman Gernot Roll took over as director when Alex Corti died last year in the middle of shooting, and it's a triumph for both men that the film remains a seamless artistic vision. It follows the increasingly dissolute life of Carl Joseph (Tilman Gunther), a sensitive young man who is destined to follow in the footsteps of his ruthless father, Franz von Trotta (Max von Sydow), a captain in the Emperor's army. From a portrait of one family's moral and social decline, Radetzky March reveals the larger picture of a crumbling Central Europe at the turn of the century.