Joyless Street  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Joyless Street (Die freudlose Gasse, 1925, exhibited in the U.S. as The Street of Sorrow, in Britain as The Joyless Street), a film based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer and directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in Germany, is one of the first films of the New Objectivity movement. Greta Garbo stars in her second major role. The film is often described as a morality story in which the 'fallen woman' suffers for her sins, while the more virtuous is rewarded.

The film's sets were designed by the art directors Otto Erdmann and Hans Sohnle.

Plot

In 1921 in an alley called Melchiorgasse in the poor part of Vienna, Austria, there are only two wealthy people: the butcher Josef Geiringer and Mrs. Greifer, who runs a fashion boutique and a nightclub, patronized by wealthy Viennese. Annexed to the nightclub is Merkl Hotel, a brothel to which the women of the nightclub bring their clients. The film follows the lives of two women from the same poor neighborhood, as they try to better themselves during the period of Austrian postwar hyperinflation. They are Maria, a streetwalker with a cruel and abusive father, and Grete, who at the last moment, is saved from this fate.

For the poor, the central crisis which begins the film is the lack of meat. Greta's family is made up of a proud, civil servant father and a little sister who bitterly complains that she can no longer live on cabbage soup. Grete promises meat the next day, as the butcher has advertised frozen Argentine meat in the morning. But while standing in the overnight line, Grete passes out and loses her place.

As for Maria, after being screamed at by her father for failing to bring home margarine, she writes to her lover, banking clerk Egon Stirner, and begs him to take her but ultimately believes him to be unfaithful, and falsely accuses him of murder, all the while knowing the true identity of the murderer, from having witnessed it herself.

At the finale, Else, a wife and mother, who previously provided sexual favors to the butcher for meat, kills the butcher because he refuses her any more meat. The poor of the neighborhood, hearing the sounds of the nightclub, revolt against the clients by throwing stones. The nightclub burns down killing Else and her husband in the attic, but not before allowing them to ease their infant safely to the waiting poor. Only Grete seems to have any hope of leaving Melchiorgasse, and this because of her relationship with an American Red Cross officer.

Cast

• Asta Nielsen as Maria Lechner
• Greta Garbo as Greta Rumfort
• Agnes Esterhazy as Regina Rosenow
• Werner Krauss as Metzger von Melchiorstrasse
• Henry Stuart as Egon Stirner
• Einar Hanson as Lt. Davis
• Gregori Chmara as Kellner
• Karl Etlinger as Max Rosenow
• Ilka Grüning as Frau Rosenow
• Jaro Fürth as Councilor Rumfort
• Renate Brausewetter as Frau (uncredited)
• Mario Cusmich as Colonel Irving (uncredited)
• Maria Forescu as Frau (uncredited)
• Robert Garrison as Don Alfonso Canez (uncredited)
• Valeska Gert as Frau Greifer (uncredited)
• Tamara Geva as Lia Leid (uncredited)
• Max Kohlhase as Maria's father (uncredited)
• Krafft-Raschig as American soldier (uncredited)
• Lya Mara as Frau (uncredited)
• Edna Markstein as Frau Merkel (uncredited)
• Alexander Murski as Dr. Leid (uncredited)
• Loni Nest as Rosa Rumfort (uncredited)
• Iván Petrovich as Man (uncredited)
• Raskatoff as Trebitsch (uncredited)
• Otto Reinwald as Man (uncredited)
• Gräfin Tolstoi as Fräulein Henriette
• Sylvia Torf as Maria's mother (uncredited)
• Hertha von Walther as Else (uncredited)

See also

• Joy