The Joyless Street

As an entry into Weimar life, well Vienna, Austria, but it must have spoken to and about both places equally after the war, this opens a window in a time of hyperinflation and scarcity. And this is what I was looking for, direct experience from within the world that gives rise to it, as something that was about life "now".

We see on one hand the controllers, from the butcher that people line up to buy his precious meat, to the war profiteer who's come to run a scheme on the stockmarket, to the madame of a private club who exploits innocent desperation. All of them lecherous cutouts - but no doubt cut from life. Meanwhile around them dance and mingle various crowds of those who still have.

And on the other side the hapless schmucks dangling on strings of this cruel world being manipulated from above, the poor family downstairs, the girl whose father loses everything when the market tumbles and she's forced to entertain in the club, the unemployed couple who must live in someone's barn. The fancy rooms are closed to them, the streets they know bleak and ugly.

It is all here in a sense, however much schematic. Being a silent, the visceral impression is of a nightmare and reverie, something you'd want to wake up from - and yet the presentation of reality, within silent limits of the era of course, we would call realist, not expressionist.

And this is seen in another way. One of the things that first stirred in the murk of Weimar was film noir, not the actual thing but its ghostly progenitors. Mabuse would posit a bleak world much like we see here, inspired from the same dazed hopelessness no doubt, but a devious mastermind was behind it, the product of dazed imagination. There are devious minds here, but all of them ordinary schemers.

There's clear sight in other words. It was still too early in Pabst's career however and for where I know him to have gone with characters and story much like these, this seems like a modest beginning, a ground floor for future ones to be built on top.

'Joyless' is right; this brooding, silent melodrama, set in the economic shambles of post-World War I Austria, looks as if it were filmed entirely at night. Working on the same principle as a soap opera, it's an exaggerated dramatic recreation of life in hard times, when housewives were forced to sell themselves to pay for their family's next meal, while the last remnants of the aristocracy blithely danced the evenings away and worked their spurious financial schemes, ignorant of the poverty surrounding them. The complicated plot involves jealousy, murder, seduction, and Greta Garbo, looking older and wiser than any twenty year old has a right to. The film was almost a warm-up for Pabst's equally debauched 'Pandora's Box', and was also known (for good reason) as 'Street of Sorrow'.

Note: I saw what was probably the truncated version, on Super-8 (!!) The fully restored film would likely rate even higher...

1st watched 2/6/2007,61 minute edited version - 6 out of 10 (Dir-G.W. Pabst): Interesting silent drama that shows the major differences between upper-echelon and depression Austria after World War I and portrays it very well for the most part. The movie turns into a romantic piece in the last quarter which negates it's effectiveness but still shows us more than we normally see from this type of film. Greta Garbo plays in what is labeled as her first starring role in the version I watched, and does an admiral job as the daughter of a retired civil servant who's always trying to do the right thing to help her family's financial situation but it never seems to work out. Her performance is all about her facial and body gestures which, of course, is a must for a silent film and she is excellent with this. The hero in the film is an American do-gooder who helps the family survive by moving into their home and paying rent, but the authorities would prefer that he mingle with the uppity crowd and soon removes him from the setting. Everything works out in the end like a good Hollywood movie, which in my opinion takes away from the effectiveness of what could have been a more impressive piece of movie-making. ;watched app. 94 minutes version on 11/29/2015;added scenes and totally different non-romantic somewhat incomplete darker ending lend to a deeper film overall

For a long time "Die freudlose gasse" was not available in his "directors cut" form because all too explicit brothel scenes were deleted by censors. Only in 1997 a reconstruction took place. I saw the "full version". It is a good movie but above all the movie has special interest from the perspective of film history.

"Die freudlose gasse" forms a transition between the German expressionism and "die neue sachlichkeit / new objectivity". The skewed set pieces in the entrance to the nightclub of Frau Greifer reminds of German expressionism but the subject of the film is 100% new objectivity. No psychological themes such as in for example "Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari" (1920, Robert Wiene) but social engagement with the (very) poor in Vienna after the hyperinflation.

Some films emphasize the fate of the poor, for example "The grapes of wrath" (1940, John Ford). Some films emphasize the ruthlessness of the rich, for example "Wallstreet" (1987, Oliver Stone). In "Die freudlose gasse" Pabst emphasizes the contradiction between the rich and the poor. He does so by intelligent editing, and in so doing brings the theory of associative editing of Sergeij Eisenstein to the West.

There is not only a contradiction between rich and poor, but also a contradiction between poor and impoverished. After all this film is not situated after the stock market crash of 1929 but after the hyperinflation caused by (the piece treaty of) the First World War. This hyperinflation could make members of the middle class poor in only a few hours. Maria (played by Asta Nielsen) is a daughter of a poor family. Greta (played by Greta Garbo) is daughter of an impoverished family. Maria ends badly, Greta escapes the misery. Symbolically two big stars of Scandinavian cinema pass on the relay baton in this movie.

The most striking character of this film is however not played by either Asta Nielsen or Greta Garbo but by Valeska Gert as Frau Greifer. Her character is a sort of female Mephistopheles. She is both tailor and owner of a nightclub. As a tailor she sells expensive coats on credit. As the owner of the nightclub she coerces young girls to perform when they could not pay their debts.

In the post-WW1 in Vienna, a group of millionaires decide to manipulate the stock market with rumors to make it fall in the first moment and raise when people discover the truth. The ambitious Egon Stirner (Henry Stuart) loves Regina Rosenow (Agnes Esterhazy), who is the daughter of a wealthy man and she does not believe in his feelings. Egon has a love affair with Lia Leid, who is the wife of the wealthy Dr. Leid, and he asks if she may borrow some money to him to invest in the stock market. Meanwhile the secretary Marie (Asta Nielsen) has an unrequited love for Egon and decides to ask for a loan to Mrs. Greifer, who is the owner of a brothel in the poor Melchior Street, to give to Egon. The wealthy Don Alfonso Canez offers the amount to Marie and she goes to a room with him. When Lia is mysteriously murdered in a room in the same hotel, Marie falsely accuses Egon of killing her to Canez.

Meanwhile, the bureaucrat Hofrat Rumfort (Jaro Fürth) is not aware of the manipulation of the market and believes that is rich with the fall of the stocks and he spends a great amount. His daughter Greta (Greta Garbo) loses her job and they are forced to rent a room in their apartment to the Red Cross Lieutenant Davis (Einar Hanson) that pays a large amount to her. However she is forced use the money to pay the debts of her father. The only way to make money to feed the family is prostitution in Mrs. Greifer's brothel. What will be the fate of Greta?

"The Joyless Street" is a complex and melancholic story of a depressive period of history. The work of Georg Wilhelm Pabst is amazing since he is able to present a long feature (the edited version of 125 minutes running time) with many sub-plots and characters. This movie is also one of her first work of the gorgeous Greta Garbo that has a top-notch performance. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rua das Lágrimas" ("Street of the Tears")