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 diva. Symbolized by one dreary but bustling street in Vienna where meat is hard to come by but souls are cheap, Pabst's film is an uncompromising portrait of post-World War I social malaise. Garbo, the daughter of a councilor 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. Nielsen portrays a "kept woman" as a true captive, chained by jewels while she longs for another man whom she kills for, only to end up on the street. This is a German "street film," but with a difference, "for it...destroyed the romanticism, and exposed the stark reality of hunger and passion under distorted conditions" (Paul Rotha). (JB)The Joyless Street "is not only one of the most important films of the Weimar Republic, it is also one of the most spectacular censorship cases of the era," writes film archivist Jan-Christopher Horak. Horak's interesting account of this reconstruction project can be found at www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/ fir1298/jhfr5b.html.