Variety

E.A. Dupont's electrifying melodrama set in the world of trapeze artists became one of the most commercially successful German films of the 1920s — and it's easy to see why. Emil Jannings plays Boss Huller, a former trapeze star now rotting in prison, who recounts the jealousy, passion, and murder that brought him there. The film comes blazingly alive in its circus sequences, where Karl Freund's camera swings from the trapeze itself, plunges into the crowd, and spins with the performers in a dizzying display of visual virtuosity that stunned audiences worldwide. The story is pure pulp — love triangle, betrayal, murder — but the filmmaking is so kinetic and inventive that it transcends its melodrama. A landmark in camera movement that directly influenced Hollywood's visual ambitions.