German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1020/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Oertel, Berlin. Asta Nielsen in Die freudlose gasse / The Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925)
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5098. Photo: Sascha / Sofar Film. Greta Garbo in Die freudlose Gasse / Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1007/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Oertel, Berlin. Asta Nielsen in Die freudlose gasse / The Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925).
A piece of meat in exchange for sexual services
The plot of Die freudlose Gasse unfolds across several parallel levels that are interwoven and ultimately merge. The film is set in 1921. Some people enrich themselves through a share scam. Betting on falling prices, they spread a false rumour causing the price of a coal share to fall temporarily. Others are plunged into poverty as a result. In an alley called Melchiorgasse in a poor quarter of Vienna, the lives of several people coincide. Marie (Asta Nielsen), daughter of an abusive war veteran father (Max Kohlhase), hopes to escape her home with the help of her boyfriend Egon (Henry Stuart), a bank clerk. Grete (Greta Garbo) is the elder daughter of impoverished civil servant Rumfort.
Marie and Grete join the overnight line of waiting customers outside of the butcher's shop run by the abusive Josef Geiringer (Werner Krauss), but Grete passes out and loses her place. Marie and her friend Else (Hertha von Walther) manage to enter Geiringer's shop, where they receive a piece of meat in exchange for Else's sexual services. Else offers Marie to share the meat with her, but Marie declines, knowing that Else, whose husband is unemployed, has a young child to feed.
Marie runs away from home and asks Egon to take her in, but Egon, who is entangled with two women of Vienna's high society, hoping that they will help him climb up the social ladder, declines. She is offered help by Mrs. Greifer (Valeska Gert), owner of a fashion salon with an adjoining nightclub. This is where Vienna’s wealthy residents are drawn. Marie becomes the mistress of Canez (Robert Garrison), a speculator on the stock exchange market. During a date with Canez, she witnesses Egon meeting with Mrs. Lia Leid (Tamara), one of his female acquaintances. When Mrs. Leid is later found strangled, Marie states that she saw Egon commit the murder.
Meanwhile, Rumfort (Jaro Fürth) loses his pension in a share transaction in which Canez was involved, while Grete is dismissed from her job for rejecting her employer's sexual advances. To pay for their expenses, the Rumfort family offers a room to let to American Red Cross officer Lt. Davy (Einar Hanson), who is enamoured with Grete's charms. When Davy's adjutant (Mario Cusmich) accuses Grete's younger sister (Loni Nest) of stealing from their supplies, Grete's father insists that they leave. Grete borrows money from Mrs. Greifer, who in turn tries to talk Grete into working for her. Attached to the nightclub is the ‘Merkl’ love hotel, where, among other things, women pay off loans taken out from Mrs. Greifer or unpaid dress purchases by providing sexual services.
In the end, it turns out that the murder of the wealthy Lia Leid was committed out of jealousy by Marie (Asta Nielsen), who has sunk to the status of a streetwalker known as ‘Mizzi’. Her friend Else, in a fit of desperation, kills the butcher because he refuses to give her any meat. The poor residents of the street turn on the rich after hearing strange noises coming from the nightclub. They start throwing stones. In the process, the building catches fire. Else and her unemployed husband (Otto Reinwald) die in the flames, but manage to pass their child out of the window and save it. Thus, the child becomes the ‘Child of Melchiorgasse’. Only Grete Rumfort (Greta Garbo) has any hope of ever escaping this alley. Her relationship with Red Cross officer Davy offers the prospect of a better life.
German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Sofar-Film-Produktion. Werner Krauss in Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925).
German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Sofar-Film-Produktion. Henry Stuart, Agnes Eszterhazy, Ilka Grüning, Karl Etlinger, and Robert Garrison in Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925). Caption: Hotel Carlton.
German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Sofar-Film-Produktion. Einar Hanson and Mario Cusmich in Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925). Caption: At Greifer. The postcard contains a stamp of Kino-Palast Zittau.
A highly controversial novel
Die freudlose Gasse / (The) Joyless Street (1925) is a landmark film of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). This art movement emerged in Germany in the early 1920s as a counter to expressionism. The term applies to a number of artistic forms, including film. Georg Wilhelm Pabst is the director most associated with the movement. His films of the 1920s concentrate on subjects such as abortion, prostitution, labour disputes, homosexuality, and addiction. His cool and critical Die freudlose Gasse / (The) Joyless Street established Pabst’s reputation as a leading director of German film realism.
Die freudlose Gasse turns away from expressionist imagery and towards the post-war reality marked by inflation. The sets were designed by Hans Sohnle and Otto Erdmann. The film, made in just five months, was based on Hugo Bettauer’s 1924 novel. Both the author and his work were highly controversial at the time: right-wing politicians and the press denounced Bettauer’s works, and there were even calls for his ‘extermination’. The writer was murdered before filming had even finished.
The film’s enduring impact is due in no small part to the fact that the plot is carried by three brilliant actresses. Frank de Jong at IMDb: "Marie (played by Asta Nielsen) is a daughter of a poor family. Grete (played by Greta Garbo) is daughter of an impoverished family. Marie ends badly, Grete 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."
Despite a happy ending - which, unlike the literary source material, was filmed as a concession to the producers and the audience - the film was censored and cut in many countries. The version shown at the premiere in Berlin at 18 May 1925 was still 3,738 metres long. On the night before the premiere, Pabst and his film editor Mark Sorkin had removed ‘a few important scenes’ that the cinema owner had criticised. The first round of censorship on 25 May 1925 resulted in the removal of only a relatively small number of frames - around 3.5 to 4 metres (approximately 7.5 seconds, based on 25 frames per second). Following a request, a further review was carried out the following year, after which only 3,477 metres remained. Consequently, there were many different versions of the film, which differed not only in length but also in the sequence of scenes. In England, the film was banned altogether.
In Germany, several attempts were made to reconstruct the film, with the aim of getting as close as possible to the original version, i.e. that of the premiere. The first attempt was made by Enno Patalas, who in 1989 edited a version at the Munich Film Museum from three surviving copies of the film, closely following Mark Sorkin’s screenplay. Between 1995 and 1998, the second reconstruction took place at the Munich Film Museum under the direction of Jan-Christopher Horak, utilising all known negative film stock as well as all available materials that provided clues as to the correct sequence of scenes and intertitles. The resulting reconstruction of the film is approximately 3,000 metres long and runs for 151 minutes.
German postcard by Anonyme Fotografie, no. A 43. Photo: Oertel / Collection Eckemeyer, Berlin. Asta Nielsen in Die freudlose Gasse / The Joyless Street (G. W. Pabst, 1925).
French magazine cover of Mon Ciné, V, no. 210, 25 February 1926. Greta Garbo in Die freudlose Gasse / Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925), released in France in 1926 as La rue sans joie.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1020/1. Photo: Curt Oertel, Berlin. Asta Nielsen in Die freudlose Gasse / Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925). In 1929, Dutch painter Pyke Koch painted Nielsen's portrait, using one of Oertel's photos. The painting is now at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht. Curt Oertel was one of the cinematographers of the film as well.
Sources: Frank de Jong (IMDb), Wikipedia (German, Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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