"Abwege," literally translated as "Astray," but usually given the English title of "The Devious Path," and otherwise known as "Crisis," seems as if director G.W. Pabst took the sort of comedy-of-remarriage scenario that his emigrated compatriot Ernst Lubitsch was inventing in Hollywood ("The Marriage Circle" (1924), "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), "So This Is Paris" (1926)), but filmed it as though it were a somber and claustrophobic psychological melodrama, or "Kammerspielfilm" (chamber drama). The result, consequently, is jarring, but entirely gorgeous. Pabst would achieve his greatest artistic success the subsequent year by teaming up with flapper icon Louise Brooks in "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl," and while his earlier achievements, such as "The Joyless Street" (1925) with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, also tend to overshadow this film, "Abwege" is further evidence, even with its smaller budget, that Pabst was already a technically proficient filmmaker.
The dolly shots are probably the most flashy technique, which are extraordinarily intimate when tracking Irene (Brigitte Helm) through a crowded nightclub dance floor or after her and her husband (Gustav Diessl) fail to reunite one night and are as effective when employed for quick, zoom-like effects to bridge from establishing shots to highlighting character interactions. But, the entire picture is exquisitely photographed and edited. The booze and drug fueled romp of the nightclub sequence might usually get the most attention, but the scenes in the couple's swanky home are also extremely well put together, including the moody lighting effects, cutting to follow figures between rooms, and the middle-class set designs. Even the train station sequence looks stunning with the low-key lighting. Almost everything must've been done in a studio.
Helm provides a sultry look throughout much of the proceedings and strips to her negligee in one scene to make a spectacle of her body, although the comedy-of-remarriage plotting undermines her character's image early on as a proto-feminist turned flapper amidst the glorious decadence of the Weimar Republic, to escape the housewife's gilded cage. Meanwhile, her husband intermittently surveils her, and, otherwise, the film's system of looks is maintained by some dolls sold at the nightclub. Diessl looks absolutely deranged much of the time. While Irene demonstrates concern at one point that her husband will kill himself; with that look on his face and the chiaroscuro effects wherever he went--even the wind gushing through the door when he enters the home of his wife's suspected lover, I thought it more likely he was going to murder someone else. I also like that the other man in the love triangle is an artist, for art-within-art, although the stuff with the boxer is less effective. It's suggestive that the artist spends all his time drawing Irene when he can't have her, but as soon as it seems he might be able to, he's sketching the portrait of some strange old man. Also interesting to note is that sound effects are hardly needed (and there were none in the score by Mauro Colombis for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival screening): views of a phone intercut with characters suddenly looking at it are enough to inform that it's ringing, and the aforementioned gust of wind requires no noise, either.
Although "Abwege" seems to have been circulating for a while now, the restoration presented for Pordenone is my first viewing of it. The recreated tinting/toning adds a lot, too, to an already practically pristine restored print. The entire narrative isn't much ado about anything, really, but it's usually worth it to just look and, if need be, forget the story of these late silent films made by the masters of the art form, and Pabst, indeed, was one of the great filmmakers.
(Note: Incomplete 35mm camera negative from the German Film Archive combined with a reel from a foreign print from the Swiss Film Archive, restored with added tinting/toning and title cards, and now housed in the Austrian Film Archive.)
