悲情花街

　　1925德国剧情片《悲情花街》由G·W·帕布斯特导演，Asta Nielsen主演，影片讲述的是：
Die freudlose Gasse The Joyless Street directed Georg Wilhelm Pabst from a script by Willy Haas based on a novel by Hugo Bettauer 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 While the film made its director famous the state institutions of control guaran...[显示全部]teed that no one would ever see the film in its original form The film was considered too much of a provocation Its story from the inflationary period in Vienna in the years immediately after World War I offered enough dynamite for several muckraking novels nouveau riches currency and stock market speculators who wallow in Babylonian luxury homeless and unemployed Lumpenproletariat living in barns women who sell their souls for a bit of fresh meat at the butchers arrogant but impoverished former bureaucrats unaware of their social slide young social climbers willing to prostitute themselves with high society women sexual orgies and bordellos murder out of jealousy murder out of despair and finally a revolution in the streets
Contemporary film critics as well as film historians have always recognized The Joyless Street as a seminal film a film on the border between German Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit new realism Two quotes from contemporary reviews may illustrate the point the Berliner Tageblatt wrote In terms of its acting this is a beautiful film with great direction and wonderful actors In fact the film starred Asta Nielsen Werner Kraus Hertha von Walter and a young Greta Garbo who would go on to a stellar career in Hollywood In the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung Otto Friedrich wrote He Pabst achieves his goal in great style does not tread on wellworn paths presents new ideas which are uniquely his own and with this achievement gives us a new hope He captures the atmosphere of an idea keeps redrawing it on the surface in ever more intensive images in contrasts of action that make an ever stronger impression He illustrates the downtrodden souls of the era and the manic lust for pleasure of its people who are trying to do nothing more than escape for a few minutes from the terrible truth of the present
Not only was the film cut for political and moral reasons in every country where it was publicly shown it was also reedited in order to close the huge gaps created by censorship cuts Thus in almost every country totally different narratives of The Joyless Street emerged According to Mark Sorkin Pabsts editor he and Pabst had made the first cuts the night before the premiere because the theatre owner insisted the film be shortened

While the first version of The Joyless Street still had a length of 3738 meters only four meters were initially cut by the censorship board on 25 May 1925 the film was back in court on 29 March 1926 because the police had issued a decree calling for a total ban on the film due to its lewd and seditious tendencies Now only 3477 meters remained of the film None of the later surviving versions ever came close to this length Neither a German version nor the original German censorship cards are known to exist
Everyone who has seen the new reconstruction of The Joyless Street agrees that it is a vast improvement over all previously existing versions Yet it remains only a subjective attempt at a reconstruction While it is true that the reconstruction team tried to base every one of it decisions on documentary evidence it must also be admitted that without a surviving original German version we will never know what the film really looked like Given the incredible complexity of the narrative involving at least six different subplots and the fact that the film is still missing at least 700 meters this version must be characterized as at attempt at a reconstruction
JanChristopher Horak