While this series focuses on “German Film Directors in Hollywood,” for the purpose of contrast and to illustrate the degrees of talent represented by German film emigres to the United States, we are presenting also several German-produced works by filmmakers highlighted in this series. Ewald-Andre Dupont (1891-1956) made one film which is not only indisputably a classic, Variety, but one of the most influential films of all time. Numerous American films of the late '20s, with Emil Jannings or Lon Chaney or Jean Hersholt, were inspired by Dupont's sordid story of love, jealousy and murder among a group of second-rate Variety performers. Variety is notable for its fine acting, especially from Emil Jannings as a trapeze artist, and some skillfully evoked side-show atmosphere, but the film is of interest today primarily for the mobile camera work of Karl Freund, whose virtuoso photography of the trapeze acts - the camera flies through the air with the performers - is as impressive as his photography of Murnau's The Last Laugh a year earlier. On the basis of this film alone, Hollywood invited Dupont, Jannings and co-star Lya de Putti to America, where Jannings fared best (until the coming of sound inspired him to return to Germany, and The Blue Angel).