"Die freudlose Gasse" or "The Joyless Street" is a German film from 1925, so the fact that this one is less than a decade away from its 100th anniversary shows you that this is of course a black-and-white silent film. And the names Asta Nielsen, Greta Garbo and Werner Krauss should make everybody curious who has an interest in this era of filmmaking and genre. There is a lot of crime happening in this film and it was an era of depression in general if you look how this came out 8 years after the end of World War I and also 8 years before the Nazis' claim to power. Certainly not the most delightful years. The tone and atmosphere of the film are in accordance. As a whole, it may have had to do mostly with my general dislike of silent black-and-white films that I did not end up enjoying this movie. The version i watched ran for slightly under 2 hours, but I see that there are so many different version out there, the shortest being edited down to under an hour and the longest running for approximately 3 hours. I guess I am glad that I did not watch the latter as this movie (especially the forgettable plot and story) already dragged a whole lot at 118 minutes. I only recommend this film to the most die-hard Pabst and German silent film fans, but these have already seen it anyway I guess. Everybody else may want to skip it.
Review of The Joyless Street
