“Hintertreppe is the earliest example of the intimate psychological film of the German Silent Cinema which took its genre label of Kammerspielfilm from the theater of Max Reinhardt, the Kammerspiel at which spectators (no more than 300) could perceive the smallest, subtlest details of gestures and movement. Scenarist Carl Mayer was a specialist in this ‘chamber play' form of filmic character study. His most famous script was for Murnau's Last Laugh (1924), which shares with Hintertreppe the characteristics of Kammerspielfilm, including the suppression of explanatory or dialogue titles and the thematic focus on drab lower middle-class social existence. The drama in Hintertreppe involves three people: a housemaid absorbed in everyday chores (Henny Porten), her lover who has promised to write her from afar, and a partly paralyzed postman who morbidly desires the girl and intercepts the letters. The directors were Leopold Jessner, second only to Riefenstahl as the most progressive stage director of the period, and Paul Leni, who later made Waxworks in Germany and The Cat and the Canary in Hollywood.” --“Treasures from the Eastman House,” PFA publication