Die freudlose Gasse / Joyless Street (1972 ZDF Tonfassung / Gerd Luft, Jürgen Labenski)

G. W. Pabst: Die freudlose Gasse / Joyless Street (DE 1925). Poster design: Boris Bilinsky.

013436 / 12 / DE / 1925 / Pabst, G.W. / / drama / Freudlose Gasse, Die / Iloton katu. © Sofar-Film-Produktion. P: Michael Salkin, Romain Pinès, G. W. Pabst, Mark Sorkin. D: G. W. Pabst. SC: Willy Haas – based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer. DP: Guido Seeber, Curt Oertel, Walter Robert Lach.
    CAST: Greta Garbo (Grete Rumfort), Asta Nielsen (Maria Lechner), Werner Krauss (the butcher).
    Original length 3734 m /20 fps/ 162’.
    Telepremiere: 31 Oct 1972, ZDF Tonfassung by Gerd Luft, Jürgen Labenski, music by Hans Jönsson: 110’.
    Finnish subtitles by Saara Lappalainen-Parikka.
    PAL transmission by Yleisradio TV2 after midnight on Sunday/Monday 1–2 March 1998. Viewed on VHS. ****

First of all, one has to be grateful to see any version of this grim work of die Neue Sachlichkeit with a moving part for Greta Garbo. But then, this film, available for decades only in incomplete versions, was painstakingly restored last year – why did we not get to see that restoration? The version seen now was the censored one, with poor pictorial quality and shown with the wrong gate (Garbo’s head was often missing). In last year’s interesting documentary Pabst wieder sehen there is a scene-by-scene comparison how the film is profoundly altered by replacing the missing scenes.