She may be impoverished and drifting dangerously close to prostitution, but the alluring young Greta Garbo still looks sultry in this early drama from G. W. Pabst. It's a resolutely downbeat movie, exposing the self-absorbed depravity of the haves in post-WW1 Vienna, and the negative impact their attitudes have on the have-nots. Although it's remembered as Garbo's breakthrough movie, the nominal star is Asta Neilsen, approaching the end of her career, in a role for which she is too old, but which is every bit as sympathetic as Garbo's - although for entirely different reasons. Werner Krauss also stands out as a brutish butcher who dispenses meat in return for sexual favours. A dark but rewarding picture, but avoid the bowdlerised 60m version (142m version viewed).
Review of The Joyless Street
