Das Notizbuch des Mr. Pim is structured around competing and contradictory narratives. While notes taken during an interview with a right-wing journalist - a convenient device in a silent film - tell of economic and cultural decline, of the very great damage that the empowerment of the workers has done to 'das schone alte Wien' [beautiful old Vienna], this account and its nostalgia for 'das goldene Wienerherz' [the golden heart of Vienna] are repeatedly juxtaposed with images of capitalist exploitation, militarism, extreme poverty and grim living conditions in the pre-1918 period.