Asphalt

Often overshadowed by his contemporaries like Ernst Lubitsch or F. W. Murnau, the German Expressionist director Joe May is most widely recognized for two things: helping Fritz Lang enter the film business, and directing the 1929 city-symphony proto-noir Asphalt. The film’s classic noir plot—a gorgeous petty thief seduces a straitlaced cop, and soon both are over their heads in trouble—plays out in a whirl of Berlin traffic, dizzying camerawork, rapid-fire editing, and Expressionist set designs and lighting. A technical triumph, Asphalt was one of the silent era’s last hurrahs, and a summation of German Expressionist style.