The Joyless Street

'Joyless' is right; this brooding, silent melodrama, set in the economic shambles of post-World War I Austria, looks as if it were filmed entirely at night. Working on the same principle as a soap opera, it's an exaggerated dramatic recreation of life in hard times, when housewives were forced to sell themselves to pay for their family's next meal, while the last remnants of the aristocracy blithely danced the evenings away and worked their spurious financial schemes, ignorant of the poverty surrounding them. The complicated plot involves jealousy, murder, seduction, and Greta Garbo, looking older and wiser than any twenty year old has a right to. The film was almost a warm-up for Pabst's equally debauched 'Pandora's Box', and was also known (for good reason) as 'Street of Sorrow'.

Note: I saw what was probably the truncated version, on Super-8 (!!) The fully restored film would likely rate even higher...