Film Review
With his third film, G.W. Pabst not only established himself as one of
Germany's leading filmmakers, he also provided Greta Garbo with her
springboard to Hollywood in the role that was, arguably, the first to
exploit her acting talents to the full. The previous year, Garbo
had made her debut in Mauritz Stiller's
The Atonement of Gösta Berling
(1924) and was well on the way to becoming an international star.
Die Freudlose Gasse (a.k.a.
Joyless Street) proved that Garbo
wasn't a one-hit wonder and she was soon heading for America, at the
invitation of Louis B. Mayer. When Pabst hired Garbo for his film
the actress was in straitened circumstances and desperate for work (as
was her Svengali, Stiller), so she was perfectly suited to a portray a
woman coping with the indignity of financial hardship at the time of
hyperinflation in post-WWI Germany and Austria.
Although stardom was beckoning, the twenty-year old Garbo had to
content herself with second billing in the film. The lead role
went to an actress who was fifteen years her senior, Asta Nielsen, one
of Germany's leading film stars at the time. They may play
characters who are in a virtually identical situation, but Garbo and
Nielsen could hardly be more different. Near the end of her
illustrious career, Nielsen was very much a diva of the silent era, and
her mannerisms and appearance were already looking dated by this
time. Garbo, by contrast, represented modernity, not only more
naturalistic in her performance, but also more vital and
engaging. There is a cruel irony in the fact that Nielsen played
the doomed of the two heroines, the one who is fated to be crushed by
circumstances. Garbo triumphs over adversity and is whisked away
to a happier future by a handsome American - as would soon happen in
real life.
From Hugo Bettauer's moralistic novel, Pabst crafted a powerful
indictment of post-war Austria and Germany, depicting
extremes of decadence and penury existing side-by-side, with some
getting rich by speculation whilst the majority struggled to fend off
starvation.
The film's lurid subject matter made it a box office hit but its more
graphic scenes ended up being removed at the insistence of the
censor.
In some countries, the film was more extensively trimmed or else banned
outright.
Die Freudlose
Gasse was one of the earliest examples of New Objectivity (Neue
Sachlichkeit) in German cinema, a movement that rejected expressionism
in favour of a far more realistic portrayal of everyday subjects.
Pabst was particularly concerned with the fate of ordinary women in
German society, the hardships they had to bear and how they were
exploited by the male sex. The fate of the two heroines in
Die Freudlose Gasse would be
replayed in many of Pabst's subsequent great films, most notably
Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (1927),
Abwege
(1928) and
Pandora's Box (1929).
© James Travers 2014
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Next Georg Wilhelm Pabst film:
Geheimnisse einer Seele (1926)
Film Synopsis
Vienna, 1921. In the chaotic aftermath of WWI, food is scarce and
it is only the unscrupulous who prosper. In Melchiorgasse, a
street in a poorer part of town, the butcher Josef Geiringer is doing a
roaring trade, and so is his wife, the owner of an upmarket nightclub
with a brothel attached. Two less fortunate residents on
the same street are Maria Lechner and Greta Rumfort, ordinary young
women who live on the breadline. Maria finds relief from her
misery when she falls in love with a younger man, Egon, but he shows
little interest in her and exploits Maria's devotion to drive her into
prostitution. The same fate seems to await Greta as one disaster
after another drive her and her father, a retired civil servant,
towards destitution. Shortly after her father loses his pension
by investing in shares that prove to be worthless, Greta is dismissed
by her employer when she resists his lecherous advances. In the
end, Greta has nothing else left to sell but her body...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.