Prater violet resembles episodes in goodbye to berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence' - edmund wilson an impatient phone call from the temperamental austrian director, friedrich bergmann, introduces a young christopher isherwood to the film industry. 'a deliberate historical parable. Prater violet resembles episodes in goodbye to berlin and keeps up the same high level of excellence' - edmund wilson an impatient phone call from the temperamental austrian director, friedrich bergmann, introduces a young christopher isherwood to the film industry. Isherwood's job is to rescue the script of an idiotic love story set in nineteenth-century vienna, a film called prater violet. In the real vienna of 1934 the austrian right crushes a socialist uprising. Bergmann is distraught and his prophecy of the coming war goes unheeded. As tensions on set grow, studio intrigues and competing egos threaten to derail the whole project.