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The springboard is Lubitsch's The Marriage Circle, Cassavetes' Faces is four decades away. As slender as a Modigliani blonde, the wife (Brigitte Helm) paces the gilded Berlin cage, frustrated by the inattention of her lawyer husband (Gustav Diessl). Her profile captivates the artist (Jack Trevor), sketched on a napkin and printed on a canvas, a whole studio of portraits. "You see... You're the focus of my work." The dream escape to Vienna is aborted in a little Madame Bovary shaft, next stop is the Weimar nightclub where the sensualist friend (Hertha von Walther) holds court. Bobbing and weaving on the swarming dance floor, G.W. Pabst's camera luxuriates on vertiginous rhythms, writhing bodies and feline glances, a swirl of streamers and a blizzard of cocaine. (The widowed addict haunts the place with messy mane and hollow eyes, taking newcomers behind curtains for a taste.) The visiting politician (Fritz Odemar) thoroughly enjoys the decadence ("What are you virtuous councilors doing in the den of sin?"), the heroine however remains suspended between abandon and unease. The conjugal state, the faddish crowd, cp. Fellini's Giulietta degli spiriti. The couple draws closer and then pulls apart, "a crisis" is the husband's dry term for a woman's storm of thorny emotions. The atelier and the boxing ring are equal arenas for the pugilist (Nico Turoff) to pursue the bored socialite, the aesthete returns in the nick of time. Sinuous flow, sparse intertitles, Helm's brittle eroticism. The courtroom finish is for the benefit of McCarey's The Awful Truth. "And when do you want to get married?" "As soon as possible!" Afterward, Pabst was ready for Pandora's Box. Cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |