G. W. Pabst's first feature was in the Expressionist style: Der Schatz ("The Treasure," 1923). His next, The Joyless Street (1925), remains the most widely seen of the street films. Set in Vienna during the period of hyperinflation, the film follows the fates of two women: Greta, the middle-class daughter of a civil servant, and Maria, a woman from a poverty-ridden home. When Greta's father loses his money, she is nearly prostituted, while Maria becomes the mistress of a rich man. The Joyless Street portrays the era's financial chaos, perhaps most vividly in the scenes of women lining up to buy meat from a callous butcher who extorts sexual favors in exchange for food. (Due to the film's controversial subject matter, it was often censored abroad, and truncated versions still circulate.)
Pabst's subsequent career was uneven. He turned out some ordinary films, such as the conventional triangle melodrama Crisis (1928). However, his Secrets of a Soul
(1926) was the first serious attempt to apply the tenets of the new Freudian school of psychoanalysis in a film narrative. This desire for a scientific approach to psychological problems marks Secrets of a Soul as another variant of the New Objectivity. It is virtually a case study, following a seemingly ordinary man who develops a knife phobia and seeks treatment from a psychoanalyst. Though the depic-
5.29 An Expressionist cityscape in Secrets of a Soul.
5.30
Resort towns of southern France. In a 1927 Ufa film called Die geheime Macht (“The Secret Force”), a group of Russian nobles who flee the Russian Revolution end up running a cafe in Paris; there the heroine is courted by a rich young Englishman. Even stories set in Germany frequently included foreign characters.
Stylistically, many German films are virtually indistinguishable from the Hollywood product. German filmmakers had been exposed to American films from 1921 on, and many admired what they saw. Moreover, the heavy investment in new equipment and facilities during the inflationary period left a few German studios nearly on a par technically with the major Hollywood firms. The Germans’ skill with the moving camera enhanced their grasp of American lighting techniques and continuity editing. During the late 1920s, German filmmakers often employed the 180-degree rule and over-the-shoulder shotlreverse shots (5.33, 5.34).
This attempt to create a standardized quality film that did not seem distinctively German worked well for the industry in the late silent era. Exports rose, and Ufa released a significant number of its films in the American market (though these usually played only in city theaters that specialized in imported films). The political swing toward the radical right in the early 1930s, however, would eventually cut the German film industry off from the rest of the world once more.
Tion of psychoanalysis is oversimplified, the Expressionist style of some of the dream sequences (5.29) adds considerable interest to the film.
Pabst also made another major New Objectivity film, The Loves of Jeanne Ney. in 1928. The film's famous opening exemplifies what critics admired in his work. Rather than showing the villain immediately, the sequence begins with a tightly framed panning shot that builds a quick sense of his character through realistically observed details (5.30-5.32).
Pabst's two late silent films starring the luminous American actress Louise Brooks, Pandora's Box (aka Lulu,
1929) and Das Tagebuch einer Verlornenen ( "Diary of a Lost Girl," 1929), enhanced his reputation and recently have received renewed attention. By the late 1920s he was a favorite with critics and intellectual audiences in Europe and the United States. Pabst also made some of the most notable early German sound films.
5.31
5.30-5.32 The first shot of The Loves of Jeanne Ney, moving from the villain's worn shoes propped carelessly against the woodwork, to his hand searching the litter on a table for a cigarette butt, and to him lighting up, with a liquor bottle prominent in the foreground.
5.32
5.33, 5.34 The style of many ordinary German films was virtually indistinguishable from that of Hollywood movies, as in this over-the-shoulder shotlreverse-shot scene in Yom Tater fehlt jede Spur (“No Trace of the Culprit,” 1928, Constantin J. David).
World History
