User reviews

That's the message of this very political tragedy. Lead actor Hermann Vallentin -- a dead ringer for Vernon Dent, by the way -- loses his job to a tabulating machine and gradually falls to pieces. Meanwhile, Anna Sten -- who photographs very nicely from certain angles -- is jilted by her boyfriend when the sheriff comes to take the cuckoo clock and falls in love with a nice young man who works hard.

This movie is acted very well. If the cinematography is a little too in your face for my taste, it is nicely handled in that context. It's a very didactic piece of film making and the contemporary critics didn't like it. For my taste it is quite decent and its disesteem is more due to the obscurity of its writer and director and its inherently conservative message.

The realistic street scenes of Uberfall or Symphony of a City mixed with the unemployment material of Letzte Mann or Die Verrufenen.

Fiftiesish Vallentin as yet another wide shouldered father figure who falls from security to shame. He is dismissive of the notion of people not being able to find work and nods approvingly at the military parade below his window. We know he's in for it big time.

Some OK Soviet influenced montages of automated bottling machinery inter cut with the captions on displaced workers. A few are sleeping on benches in the street. Real exteriors, like the apartment air shaft, and realistic interiors - another stair well - make a break with the "expressionist" style usual with these. The river ending is now missing.

Not one of the great German late silent classics but plausible, nicely filmed and cut and offering a glimpse of Sten, making her way towards Hollywood.