Reviews

I found this to be a highly thought-provoking film. In 1981 a frame was added to a 14-year-old ensemble film involving five young Polish actors (all but one of which is now dead - a poignant fact in itself). The frame itself served little cinematic or narrative purpose as far as I could see, but the central story was quite moving. Anyone with an interest in Eastern European reflections on the Holocaust would be well advised to give it a watch.

Tedious and tendentious, totally lacking in finesse or nuance. Ernst Deutsch and Ewald Balser were fine actors entirely wasted by the overwrought script. It occurs to me that this might be Pabst trying to prove he was a good guy despite having willingly made films for the Third Reich. His sentimentality fatally infects his story of 19th century antisemitism. For a far more compelling treatment of this theme, see Erich Engel's Affaire Blum, also from 1948.

Well, first of all, this film has sort of lesbians in it and no one dies or turns completely psycho. That's the good news. The downside, in short, is that it is a complete bore. There are about 20 seconds of real genuine emotion present in the whole 70 minutes. Mostly there are two pretty women grinning at each other, talking endlessly about vague, pompous-sounding Views On Life, while drinking a couple of gallons of wine over the course of a night (and one of them really oughtn't be drinking at all). The camera work is sloppy, and the "surrealistic" interpolations are simply irritating and disrupt what continuity has been established. Neither of the characters has an attractive personality (Ana is particularly unappealing), so it is difficult to see what the two see in each other. If this sounds unfairly harsh, it is because I had some expectations, based on viewer reviews, that this would be an artistically-framed psychological study of women in unusual circumstances. This was not the case. Waste of time.

Stirring, with countless lovely images: the camels cresting the dune casting spectacular shadows, the sand sliding down the slope after the simoon, the incredible faces of the Asiatic peasants, as they stoically wait for their water. And who cares about the political content of any of these early Soviet films? Let's not be anachronistic. Remember that they were intended to educate a vastly disparate population, and to inspire them. To complain about the propaganda is similar to watching horror films and then objecting to their "scare tactics", even if they are skillfully done.

This little picture is absolutely charming. There are few inconsistencies, and I would like to see a version where the "I am a murderer" scene is tinted red, as I understand it was in the original. Werner Krauss is spectacular as the bovine bourgeois, and Edith Posca, Lupu Pick's wife is extremely moving, especially in the scenes where she "throws herself" at the Paul Otto and when she vengefully confesses to her father (she reminds me of a cat in that scene). Too bad she didn't have many other acting roles ("Sylvester", also directed by Lupu Pick) is available only in Germany