"Schmid’s satire on 19th-century class relations is also a thinly veiled commentary on the failure of the 1968 political revolution. Once a year, an aristocratic Austrian family holds a traditional feast at which masters and servants trade places (the basic idea reminds Pirandello and a short story by Poe where the inmates of a asylum switch places with the doctors.) A troupe of actors are hired to entertain the guests, performing fragments from the “cultural scrap heap”: GONE WITH THE WIND, MADAME BOVARY, Tennessee Williams, Swan Lake. The decadent proceedings take on a dangerous edge when the actors incite the servants to revolt against their masters – but is the revolution also part of the act? This caustic political statement, attacked by the Left when the film was released, seems more prescient today in an age of corporate and media co-optation. In a film, that perhaps links 'RULES OF THE GAME' (Renoir) with 'VIRIDIANA' (Buñnel), Schmid intoduces his hallmark melange of operetta and pop music."