The Joyless Street

(Die freudlose Gasse)

  • Judith Rosenberg
    On Piano
featuring

Greta Garbo, Asta Nielsen, Valeska Gert, Werner Krauss,

The film that made young Greta Garbo an international star also belongs to “the great, strange Asta Nielsen,” as Pauline Kael called this Danish-born silent film diva. Symbolized by one dreary but bustling street in Vienna—where meat is hard to come by, but souls are cheap—G. W. Pabst’s film is an uncompromising portrait of post–World War I social malaise. Garbo, the daughter of a councillor facing financial ruin, and Nielsen, an escapee from a wretched family, become entangled with the nouveaux riches who frequent the boulevard for fun and whose stock-market machinations toy with lives in the balance. 

Judy Bloch
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Willy Haas
Based On
  • the novel by Hugo Bettauer

Cinematographer
  • Guido Seeber
  • Curt Oertel
  • Walter Robert Lach
Language
  • German intertitles
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • DCP
  • Silent
  • 154 mins
Source
  • Munich Filmmuseum

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.