Joseph Roth's novel might have made an ideal mini-series, having been written between 1923 and 1933 in installments for a Vienna newspaper from the author's correspondent post in Berlin, but veteran director Bernhard Wicki has instead woven the narrative into a powerful theatrical epic. Set just before and during the turbulent year of 1923-a time of often bloody political and class struggles, of enormous inflation and unemployment-The Spider's Web takes as its anti-hero one Theodor Lohse (Ulrich Muhe), a careerist of the first order who taps the current turmoil for his own unsavory ends. A monarchist without a Kaiser at the end of World War I, Lohse is lost in the political hotbed of Berlin until he joins a right-wing extremist organization and finds his niche betraying political dissidents to the police. Lohse meets his match in a Jewish double-agent, Lenz (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who not only is far craftier but has Lohse's number as a future Fascist who will go to any lengths, including murder, to further his career. Against a backdrop of the brutal suppression of Polish workers and increasing pogroms in the Jewish ghettos, Lohse himself becomes a prototype for the Germany that Roth saw coming: cringing, whining, yet an attractive womanizer, he successfully brandishes the power of cowardice. Nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture, The Spider's Web features some of the finest German screen actors including Armin Mueller-Stahl as Lohse's mentor Baron von Rastschuk.