VividSimon Simply Perfect

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

MartinHafer Betty Amann plays a pretty lady living in Berlin. However, she is a thief--and a very good one at that. Soon after the film begins, she is caught after she steals a diamond--but the authorities cannot find the stone on her. But, an eager young policeman (Gustav Fröhlich) figures out where she's hiding the diamond and he takes her off to the police station. However, he is quite foolish, as the fast-talking thief convinces him to first stop at her apartment to get her things. Well, one thing leads to another and she seduces him. To her, it's all to get out of going to jail--to him, he's having a crisis as he's betrayed everything he stood for. Where all this goes next you'll need to see for yourself.The film is generally quite good, though there are two minor problems I noticed. The acting was occasionally a bit overdone--though mostly it was quite good. Also, the ending seemed a bit hard to believe--though it was satisfying to watch. So although the film wasn't perfect, the problems were easily forgivable. Interesting and well made.

movingpicturegal Outstanding German silent era crime drama; an early film noir about a young traffic officer who gets involved with a femme fatale he has just arrested for stealing a diamond from a jeweler's shop. This spit-curled, dark-haired beauty attempts to use tears, tricks, Cognac, a pillow-laden couch proportioned like a king-sized bed, and finally a black-laced bodysuit/nightie to seduce our officer into letting her off. These two soon become emotionally involved with each other, but the officer is feeling guilt over shirking his duty to arrest her.The photography in this film is really excellent - the film as a whole is very visual, with lots of facial close-ups, softly filtered lighting along with shadowy rooms and hallways, and an interesting montage at the beginning of the asphalt streets of Berlin and it's fast moving crowds of people and traffic, all shown with interesting overlapped and angled photography. The actors all give excellent, emotional performances. The actress, Betty Amann, who portrays the thief is especially good here, seducing both our officer and the viewer with just her eyes, showing a great range of emotion in close-up. The print on the DVD of this looks good, the orchestral score is really great and suits this to a tea. I have seen many, many silent films and I would certainly count this one among the best I've seen.

netwallah Produced by Murnau, and brilliantly directed by May, this silent drama is a masterpiece of cinematography. From the opening montages, with workmen tamping down hot asphalt and the steamrollers behind them and the rain-wet streets shining in the street lights, to the traffic slanting across the street while the young policeman directs traffic, to the change in the lighting at his home after he feels he has fallen—he stands in shadow while down the hall in a halo of light his mother is busy in the kitchen, as if he were observing another world—to the expressionist shadows on the staircases toward the end—it's magnificently conceived and photographed. The lighting effects are astonishing. The story is not profound, involving an upright young traffic policeman falling under the spell of a diamond-thieving courtesan (Bette Amman), and when they are surprised in her bedroom by her regular lover, an older diplomat, who hurls the woman to the ground, the young man defends her, and himself, with the result that the man dies. He goes home and tells his parents he has killed a man, and the father, also a policeman, stands up, puts on his dress helmet, and they go downtown. But the woman intervenes, calmly incriminating herself to save the young man. She is taken away to prison, but the young man says he will wait for her, and she looks at him with eyes brimming with tears, and a smile. Amman has impossibly big dark eyes and a helmet of bobbed, curly hair. Her cloche hats give her head a sculptural look, and she also moves sometimes with astonishing sensual power, as when she throws herself on the young policeman, winding her arms around his neck, her toes clinging to his boot-tops, her huge luminous eyes inches from his. In the early part of the film she is hard and manipulative, but at the end she has been shaken by real feeling and humanized. Okay, it's an old story, riddled with cliché, but in this treatment it works, largely because the film is so beautifully shot.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre 'Asphalt' was directed by Joe May, a fairly talented director/producer who helped start the career of Fritz Lang, one of the greatest film directors of all time. Joe May had the misfortune to be Jewish in Hitler's Germany. Fortunately, he escaped to Hollywood. Unfortunately, none of Joe May's Hollywood films are especially important, although I enjoy his horror film 'The Invisible Man Returns'.'Asphalt' is a turgid drama that could almost be conceived for Emil Jannings, as it fits his formula: highly respected uniformed authority figure is corrupted and humiliated by a scarlet harlot. What keeps this from becoming a Jannings vehicle is the fact that the male protagonist is a handsome virile young man, not the fleshly Jannings. Gustav Fröhlich (the young hero of 'Metropolis') stars as Albert Holk, a traffic cop in Berlin. Despite his lowly rank, Holk has expectations of a splendid career: he is utterly honest, and his father is a highly respected police sergeant.But along comes a woman. Elsa (Betty Amann) is a beautiful young jewel thief. Escaping from her latest heist, she runs afoul of Officer Holk, but manages to ditch the evidence so that she seems to be innocent. A romance develops between the two young people. Of course, he doesn't know she's a crook. She is sincerely attracted to him, but not quite enough to give up her criminal career.SPOILERS COMING. Hans Schlettow gives a solid performance as the villain of the piece. His character is already embroiled in a sexual relationship with Elsa. But just now he's in Paris, pretending to be a staffer at the German consulate while he plans a bank heist. Eventually he robs the bank and comes back to Berlin with the swag ... just in time to catch Elsa in the arms of the policeman. Albert kills Hans, then confesses everything to his father. The ending is plausible, although it would have been rather less plausible if this same story took place in America or Britain.There is some excellent photography here, and some good performances from the leads. The street scenes in Berlin, pre-Hitler, are impressive. I'll rate this movie 7 in 10.