The Devious Path

Irene is married to a lawyer who works, and looks for something else in a painter, a nightclub, a card game, and a packet of cocaine passed under the table. Pabst keeps the camera close on Brigitte Helm through a long night of dancing and watches her decide, again and again, not to go through with any of it. The nightclub, with its dolls, its hostesses and its bored professionals, is a document of Berlin nightlife as much as a plot. Gustav Diessl is the husband. Erda-Film, 1928; also released as Crisis.