Varieté (1925)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Ewald André Dupont

Writers:

Felix Hollaender (novel)
Ewald André Dupont (scenario)

Release Date:

31 January 1926 (Finland)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

THE MOST ASTOUNDING PICTURE EVER PRODUCED! (original poster - all caps - USA)

Plot:

Prologue: The murderer "Boss" Huller - after having spent ten years in prison - breaks his silence to tell the warden his story...

Plot Keywords:

Trapeze Artist | Circus | Orphan | Berlin | Prison

Cast

Emil Jannings	...	Boss Huller
Maly Delschaft	...	The wife of Boss
Lya De Putti	...	Bertha
Warwick Ward	...	Artinelli
Alice Hechy
Georg John	...	Sailor
Kurt Gerron	...	Harbourworker
Paul Rehkopf	...	Spectator at the Fair
Charles Lincoln	...	Actor
Georg Baselt
Trude Hesterberg
Werner Krauss
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Alex Hyde and his Original New York Jazz Orchestra	...	Himself

Also Known As:

Jealousy (USA)
Variety
Vaudeville

Runtime:

USA:72 min | 112 min (18 fps)

Country:

Germany

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

USA:Passed

Company:

Universum Film (UFA)

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood" (1995)

A German sexual triangle set backstage at the circus

The male flyer initially appears in cinema as a flawed hero. The prototypes are characters found in Variety (1925), directed by Ewald Dupont and based on Felix Hollaender's novel, The Oath of Stephen Huller.

This is a semi-expressionist film about a heavy-bodied catcher-husband, Boss Huller (Emil Jannings), whose wife, Bertha-Marie (Lya de Putti), is seduced from domestic bliss by the trio's lighter-bodied star flyer, Artinelli (Warwick Ward). The cather-husband imagines dropping his rival, the flyer, but murders him instead in a fight, and goes to prison. The seducing male flyer is the provocateur of extreme passion, a position subsumed by female aerialist characters in later films. But the male aerialist as a criminal, even murderer, intermittently reappears in representation because he epitomizes a capacity for extreme risk-taking, which is translated into socially risky immoral behavior. But it is the male flyer who becomes especially vulnerable to depiction as a fallen hero, literally and for losing emotional control.

Although little-known today, Variety is one of the major works of German Expressionism. It's an immorality of emotion drama with a fine performance by (the always great) Jannings and the wonderful visual film-making that is the hallmark of the Expressionist movement (extraordinary cinematography by Karl Freund). Variety was heavily censored for its American release; how it was changed makes it almost as interesting as a case study in film censorship as it is enjoyable as a movie.

In its original version, the film begins with a drawn-out portion showing how Emil Jannings falls in love with Lya De Putti, left his wife for her, and created a trapeze act with his lover. This part of the story was excised completely by the American censors, and title cards added to redefine Jannings and De Putti as the married couple of the U.S. release version. The censors' intent was to erase the plot point of casting adulterous lovers as the established couple in a love triangle. The effect was to far more radically transform the story. The unfaithful husband who is in his turn betrayed by his unfaithful lover is transformed into a sympathetic cuckold. The opportunistic temptress who catches two men only to end up with none is transformed into a young wife who succumbs to temptation. From unsparing morality play to conventional melodrama, courtesy of censorship.