Abwege - 1928 - 7/10
AKA - The Devious Path
German silent, directed by Pabst.
Very much a precursor to Pandora’s Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl, this also explores moral shortcomings and the lifeless underbelly of the decadent Weimar.
Wife (Brigitte Helm), married to strait-laced fuss-bucket banker, deserts him one night to party with “more liberated” friends in hedonistic club.
Banker sits at home, window wide open, letting in blasts of freezing air, thinking of divorce options.
The club sequence, meanwhile, is a showstopper, and goes on for perhaps twenty minutes.
Pabst revels in the excitement, the loose morality, the sheer boredom, the drunken excesses, the hazy confusion.
Far better than most films I’ve watched, this gives a real feel to the jittery edge of Berlin before the street riots between Communists and Nazis.
Ending displayed the censor’s hand, unlike the bleak pit of Pabst’s next two films.
