VARIETY Movie Review

Vaudeville
Variete

An acrobat (Emil Jannings) abandons his wife and child to run off with a beautiful young girl (Lya de Putti).When the two of them form a trapeze act with a handsome young acrobat (Warwick Ward), Jannings's well-founded jealousy explodes into deadly violence. E.A. Dupont's silent German classic may not be one of the most subtle melodramas of all time, but it's quite gripping as an example of sheer cinematic bravado. Together with his great cameraman Karl Freund (Metropolis, The Last Laugh), Dupont created a riveting immediacy in Variety that made much of the action seem to take place from specific characters’ points-of-view. The camera keeps moving and flying through the air, but when it stops, it's often on the come-hither face and voluptuous body of Lya de Putti, who became a sensation as a result of the picture's international success. Jannings is remarkable as the sexually humiliated and dishonored acrobat—it's the kind of part he was always best at, and his performance here ranks with his similarly destroyed Professor Rath in Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel.

NEXT STOP … The Last Laugh, Pandora's Box, The Unknown (1927)

1925 104m/B GE Emil Jannings, Lya de Putti, Warwick Ward, Werner Krauss; D: E.A. Dupont; W: E.A.Dupont; C: Karl Freund. VHS VYY, NOS, DVT