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18 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Joe May's tale of forbidden self-abnegation asks whose ass is really at fault?, 28 October 2007
10/10
Author: Trent Bolden from Chinatown, California

From its elaborate and stylish opening scenes, Asphalt immediately establishes itself as a startling achievement. This unforgettable film is in many ways the perfect summation of German film-making in the silent era: a dazzling visual style, a psychological approach to its characters, and the ability to take a simple and essentially melodramatic story and turn it into something more complex and inherently cinematic. Although influenced by such classics as The Last Laugh and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Asphalt is a unique look at urban life and a classic in its own right.

The plot in Asphalt is very simple: a woman caught trying to shoplift a diamond seduces the cop entrusted with bringing her to justice and the cop pays an very high cost for his lapse in judgment, but great films don't require elaborate plots to achieve their greatness. Betty Amann, the female lead who looks like a mash-up of Louise Brooks and Betty Boop, is sensuous and sultry but not cartoonishly so. In other words, she's no Theda Bara and thank goodness for that. Perhaps if she was a cult goddess like Brooks, Asphalt would be no different than the G.W. Pabst classic Pandora's Box. It is completely baffling why Amann never became a star. Amann is paired greatly with Gustav Fröhlich, who is remembered for his performance in Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis, you will be surprised at his range here. Emotionally naked, Fröhlich goes from anger to tenderness, and then to craven denial when faced with the consequences of a violent act.

Asphalt is directed by Joe May, a leading German filmmaker of the 1910s and 1920s who is also known for the two-part epic The Indian Tomb. In addition, he helped to launch the career of Fritz Lang. Like Lang, May later relocated to Hollywood, where he directed several classic B-films, most notably The Invisible Man Returns. But Asphalt remains perhaps his most famous, and his greatest, work. However, May's handling of individual scenes is impressive. Reality is put in its place when location shots of the city are followed by a breathtaking Expressionist caricature of what we've just been shown, with the camera craning and tracking through throngs of extras and fleets of vehicles on UFA's enormous street set.

As Dave Kehr from the New York Times said, "Asphalt reveals a filmmaker of astonishing technical skills and a distinctive visual style, based on a use of raked sets to create a sense of precariousness and claustrophobia." Brilliant!!!

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
The Dutiful Officer and the Seductive Jewel Thief, 3 August 2006
10/10
Author: movingpicturegal from Los Angeles

Outstanding German silent era crime drama; an early film noir about a young traffic officer who gets involved with a femme fatale he has just arrested for stealing a diamond from a jeweler's shop. This spit-curled, dark-haired beauty attempts to use tears, tricks, Cognac, a pillow-laden couch proportioned like a king-sized bed, and finally a black-laced bodysuit/nightie to seduce our officer into letting her off. These two soon become emotionally involved with each other, but the officer is feeling guilt over shirking his duty to arrest her.

The photography in this film is really excellent - the film as a whole is very visual, with lots of facial close-ups, softly filtered lighting along with shadowy rooms and hallways, and an interesting montage at the beginning of the asphalt streets of Berlin and it's fast moving crowds of people and traffic, all shown with interesting overlapped and angled photography. The actors all give excellent, emotional performances. The actress, Betty Amann, who portrays the thief is especially good here, seducing both our officer and the viewer with just her eyes, showing a great range of emotion in close-up. The print on the DVD of this looks good, the orchestral score is really great and suits this to a tea. I have seen many, many silent films and I would certainly count this one among the best I've seen.

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
marvelous visual & thematic template, 5 August 2004
8/10
Author: goblinhairedguy from Montreal

Joe May's "Asphalt" is not as well remembered as the other masterpieces of German silent expressionist cinema, possibly due to the lack of immortals in the cast and its decidedly commercial scenario. But it certainly deserves a mention alongside the great works of Lang, Pabst, Murnau, et al. The cop-seduced-by-the-sexy-crook plot is the prototype for many a great (and not-so-great) film noir to come, and the seduction scene certainly packs a punch. Like most films of the time, it eventually descends into melodrama, but Gunther Rittau's remarkably mobile and probing camera is so skillful in revealing the characters' thoughts and lending pathos to their plight that he and the director transcend the clichés in the manner of Stahl and Ophuls, with some Langian irony peeking through at times. The opening profile of the city is a justly famed visual tour-de-force, but the stark, expressionist compositions that highlight the climax are just as striking and iconic. May never made the big time in Hollywood, but spun a few good programmers for the B picture mill.

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14 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
ASPHALT (Joe May, 1929) ***, 16 March 2006
7/10
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

I wasn't familiar with the work of director Joe May - apart from THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS (1940) and the Silent epic THE Indian TOMB (1921), a film I was disappointed by and which I always considered more of a Fritz Lang film anyway - although I had always been intrigued by this one and, now, thanks to Eureka and "Masters Of Cinema", I've managed to catch up with it.

From watching ASPHALT - followed, in short order, by SPIONE (1928) and TARTUFFE (1925) - I've reacquainted myself with the peerless craftsmanship of German cinema during the 1920s; indeed, May's film is technically quite irreproachable - particularly his depiction of city-life by night, but also the opening montage (echoing contemporaneous Russian cinema) which forms part of the title sequence. Apart from this, the film's slight but compelling plot later became a staple of the noir genre where a naïve man is embroiled in the sordid life of a femme fatale with tragic consequences (the most obvious example, ironically enough, being perhaps Fritz Lang's superlative THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW [1944]).

In this regard, the film benefits greatly from the perfect casting of the two roles but especially the captivating Betty Amann, who effortlessly exudes sexuality throughout: distracting the elderly owner of the jewel shop with her considerable charms, while casually concealing one of the precious rocks in the tip of her umbrella; seducing the young, inexperienced traffic cop by excusing herself from his presence but, when he follows her into the bedroom, finds she has slipped under the sheets and is waiting for him; when he tries to leave, she literally leaps on him and, by wrapping herself around his waist, making it practically impossible for him not to give in to her. Also notable is a brief pickpocketing scene at the beginning featuring Hans Albers; the rather violent fight between the boy and the girl's elderly associate/lover, when the latter comes back to her apartment and catches them in flagrante, in which the furniture (conveniently held by visible wires) gets literally thrown around the room; the concluding act, then, marked by a number of twists (which lead to a sort of happy ending more akin to Bresson's spiritually-infused PICKPOCKET [1959] than the hard-boiled noirs it inspired), is enormously satisfying.

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10 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
An old story, beautifully filmed, 22 March 2006
10/10
Author: netwallah from The New Intangible College

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Produced by Murnau, and brilliantly directed by May, this silent drama is a masterpiece of cinematography. From the opening montages, with workmen tamping down hot asphalt and the steamrollers behind them and the rain-wet streets shining in the street lights, to the traffic slanting across the street while the young policeman directs traffic, to the change in the lighting at his home after he feels he has fallen—he stands in shadow while down the hall in a halo of light his mother is busy in the kitchen, as if he were observing another world—to the expressionist shadows on the staircases toward the end—it's magnificently conceived and photographed. The lighting effects are astonishing. The story is not profound, involving an upright young traffic policeman falling under the spell of a diamond-thieving courtesan (Bette Amman), and when they are surprised in her bedroom by her regular lover, an older diplomat, who hurls the woman to the ground, the young man defends her, and himself, with the result that the man dies. He goes home and tells his parents he has killed a man, and the father, also a policeman, stands up, puts on his dress helmet, and they go downtown. But the woman intervenes, calmly incriminating herself to save the young man. She is taken away to prison, but the young man says he will wait for her, and she looks at him with eyes brimming with tears, and a smile. Amman has impossibly big dark eyes and a helmet of bobbed, curly hair. Her cloche hats give her head a sculptural look, and she also moves sometimes with astonishing sensual power, as when she throws herself on the young policeman, winding her arms around his neck, her toes clinging to his boot-tops, her huge luminous eyes inches from his. In the early part of the film she is hard and manipulative, but at the end she has been shaken by real feeling and humanized. Okay, it's an old story, riddled with cliché, but in this treatment it works, largely because the film is so beautifully shot.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Late UFA silent shows style trumping content as a Tru-Blue Cop is vamped by a femme fatale thief., 14 May 2007
8/10
Author: (MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com) from United States

UFA helmer Joe May, once spoken of in tandem with F W Murnau or Fritz Lang, ended his career struggling for gigs on B-list Hollywood fodder. But this late silent, a superb psychological meller lovingly restored with a fine new score on KINO DVD, shows him in top form. It's the old story of a naive cop corrupted by a shady lady. He bends the rules for a night of love. But when her rich lover returns, tragedy strikes, and his disgrace can only be erased through her redemption. Thrillingly designed & shot in a studio-created Berlin, May uses the camera with Murnau-like freedom & expressivity, only stumbling over the pacing of a few scenes he has trouble ending. Gustav Frohlich will always be stamped by his silly perf in Lang's METROPOLIS, but in this more naturalistic mode, he's touching & handsome. As the femme fatale, Betty Amann leaves an odd taste. She's an obvious precursor/model for Liza Minnelli's Sally Bowles in CABARET (had Bob Fosse seen this film?), but she's also a dead ringer for Tony Curtis in his drag mode in Billy Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT. Perhaps not as much of a stretch as it sounds since Wilder was @ UFA in '29 and even wrote May's first Hollywood pic. (05/13/07)

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
The Big Discovery Here is Betty Amann, 15 April 2008
10/10
Author: Franz from Turks and Caicos Islands

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Asphalt (1929) begins stylishly with a city montage sequence and plenty of Germanic-styled subjective point of view shots before giving way to a more subdued, intimate Kammerspiel style. A Clara Bow/Louise Brooks look-a-like (Betty Amann) is shopping for jewelry. The storeowner, entranced by her salacious behavior, does not notice when a handful of diamonds fall to the floor. The woman uses the hollowed out bottom of her umbrella to steal one of the diamonds. She is eventually caught, but pleads poverty, which convinces the shopkeeper not to press charges. However, the arresting officer, played by Gustav Fröhlich, plays by the books and insists on bringing her to the police station. The woman asks if they can go by her apartment for her papers. Once in her apartment the seduction begins full throttle. The entrance into her sexual den is given special treatment with a slow, circular panning shot from the officer's point of view. His resistance is admirable, but not impenetrable. She tries everything, including lying in wait in her bed. When all seems to fail and the officer is about to leave she hops out of the bed and literally jumps into his arms, melting his final resolve with passionate stares and heavy breathing. The theme is a common one in German expressionism: the fall/degeneration of the moral upstanding male at the hands of a woman (Pandora's Box, Blue Angel) or social forces (The Last Laugh, The Last Command, American but Germanic in feel). But May handles it subtly and with an erotic-sexual undertone one finds most strikingly in German cinema of the late twenties (Blue Angel, Pandora's Box, Metropolis, Variety, etc.). The film also reflects social critic Siegfried Kracauer's point on pre-Hitler German cinema about the presence of the weak male figure. The young officer's moral and ethical resolve is broken down by the woman's sexual advances, to the point where he accidentally murders the woman's gangster lover in a fist fight after he returns home to unexpectedly find him there (the murder is shot through a mirror reflection). However, when the policeman returns home and tells his parents, the father, also a policeman, does not hesitate to don his police uniform and arrest his son. In the end, the police officer is exonerated by the woman's guilt of complicity. She is arrested, and the final image sees her walking away along a corridor filmed through a prison-like door. As an historical aside, in an underground scene where city workers lay out asphalt, we see a sinewy camera movement along the ground that foreshadows the similar documentary-like camera movements in Pabst's Kammeradscahft (1931).

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
It's not her 'Asphalt'., 6 March 2005
7/10
Author: F Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Borroloola@earthlink.net) from Minffordd, North Wales

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

'Asphalt' was directed by Joe May, a fairly talented director/producer who helped start the career of Fritz Lang, one of the greatest film directors of all time. Joe May had the misfortune to be Jewish in Hitler's Germany. Fortunately, he escaped to Hollywood. Unfortunately, none of Joe May's Hollywood films are especially important, although I enjoy his horror film 'The Invisible Man Returns'.

'Asphalt' is a turgid drama that could almost be conceived for Emil Jannings, as it fits his formula: highly respected uniformed authority figure is corrupted and humiliated by a scarlet harlot. What keeps this from becoming a Jannings vehicle is the fact that the male protagonist is a handsome virile young man, not the fleshly Jannings. Gustav Fröhlich (the young hero of 'Metropolis') stars as Albert Holk, a traffic cop in Berlin. Despite his lowly rank, Holk has expectations of a splendid career: he is utterly honest, and his father is a highly respected police sergeant.

But along comes a woman. Elsa (Betty Amann) is a beautiful young jewel thief. Escaping from her latest heist, she runs afoul of Officer Holk, but manages to ditch the evidence so that she seems to be innocent. A romance develops between the two young people. Of course, he doesn't know she's a crook. She is sincerely attracted to him, but not quite enough to give up her criminal career.

SPOILERS COMING. Hans Schlettow gives a solid performance as the villain of the piece. His character is already embroiled in a sexual relationship with Elsa. But just now he's in Paris, pretending to be a staffer at the German consulate while he plans a bank heist. Eventually he robs the bank and comes back to Berlin with the swag ... just in time to catch Elsa in the arms of the policeman. Albert kills Hans, then confesses everything to his father. The ending is plausible, although it would have been rather less plausible if this same story took place in America or Britain.

There is some excellent photography here, and some good performances from the leads. The street scenes in Berlin, pre-Hitler, are impressive. I'll rate this movie 7 in 10.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Superb Direction And Modernity, 13 July 2008
8/10
Author: FerdinandVonGalitzien (FerdinandVonGalitzien@gmail.com) from Galiza

The first time that this German count watched Herr Joe May's "Asphalt" was during a mad Berliner soirée; the film was a wonderful and astonishing revelation, a great film due to its modernity and impeccable technical results. At the time the name of the director was written down in the decadent silent agenda as a director who would someday become famous and indeed Herr May has passed into the film history books with such superb films as "Das Indische Grabmal" (1921) and "Heimkehr" (1928).

From the very start of the film, even with the credits, Herr May's skill is established. He shows the fascinating big city and the main characters of the oeuvre ( a stylish crook, "desperate and in need", and a dutiful constable ) and skilfully uses crane shots around the streets ( MEIN GOTT!!... what an incredible and evocative atmosphere) emphasizing from that time on, the dramatic, sensual aspects of the film at once without the need of additional explanations.

As happens in many Weimar silent films, social aspects ripple beneath the surface of the story ( which concerns an unscrupulous woman and her questionable life and her obscure pimp with international interests all of which escape the innocent policeman hero ). May notes the different social classes that separate Dame Elsa ( Betty Amann ) and Herr Albert Hols ( Herr Gustav Fröhlich ), elegant and decadent for Dame Else and proletarian and common for Herr Albert ( the contrast between Dame Elsa's decadent life and Herr Albert's proletarian family are carefully depicted.) These backgrounds obviously influence their conduct and "principles", not to mention the way they both face life. Their different worlds t finally will collide hopelessly but beneath it all they are, in the end, just two lonely people ( and that's one of the most important aspect of the story ), who want to connect with each other in spite of their social and even sexual inner conflicts. Duty and law will collide with human need but redemption is also part of the mix after a painful struggle.

"Asphalt" is outstanding for its superb direction and modernity, not to mention the gorgeous and stylish Dame Betty Amann, the unquestionable and sensual star of the film thanks to the superb and wonderful Herr Günther Rittau cinematography.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must order one of his Teutonic heiresses to asphalt the Schloss pavement but in one of her most gorgeous costumes.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com, 28 January 2007
Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Weinoir and the Ufa Style

The emergence of Ufa as Germany's dominant film production company in 1921 brought a unifying, identifiable look and character to Weimar film. Parallels may be drawn between this development in German film history and the consolidation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in Hollywood. Both studios formed as the result of larger partners, consolidating with smaller companies, to create what were in effect, monopolies. Ufa, formed in 1917, purchased many smaller studios, most notably Decla-Bioscop in 1921, bringing with it producer Erich Pommer who was running Ufa within two years. Similarly, Marcus Loew's Metro bought out Mayer Pictures in 1924, bringing Louis B. Mayer's young phenom, Irving Thalberg along as MGM's head of production. Both studios, Ufa in Germany (including greater Europe) and MGM in North America, defined the standards for motion pictures in their respective markets and exerted considerable influence.

Beyond their initial successes however, the two mega-studios took increasingly divergent paths. As severe economic depression smothered the Weimar Republic, Germany's film industry struggled to survive, losing key talent (Lubitch, Leni, Murnau) from their ranks to the wealth and prosperity of Hollywood. While MGM thrived, Fritz Lang's futuristic nightmare, Metropolis (1927) failed at the box office, leaving Ufa teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In spite of their financial hardships, German filmmakers flourished creatively throughout the nineteen-twenties. Ufa films consistently evoked a dark, architectural and Gothic style with features such as Varieté (1925), Faust (1926) and Asphalt (1929), making use of brilliant creative advances in art direction and production design, which in turn would significantly influence Hollywood.

Asphalt (1929)

Monday January 29, 7:00pm, The Paramount Theater

A frenzy of murderous violence and moral turpitude lurk just beneath the urban order of Asphalt (1929). Joe May (The Indian Tomb, 1921) wrote (as Fred Majo) and directed this Ufa pot-boiler about a beautiful thief and the cop she seduces to stay out of jail.

The controlled chaos of the city is seen through a series of abstract images, beginning with the boots of workmen as they pound hot asphalt into a flat surface. In a montage of crane shots that soar over pedestrians and traffic, May introduces the hard intensity of city life. The camera descends slowly to the street where Sergeant Albert Holk, played by Gustav Fröhlich (Metropolis, 1927) is directing traffic from a concrete island. Naïve and inexperienced, Albert still lives with his Mother (Else Heller) and Father (Albert Steinrück), a Chief Sergeant. The young policeman commands the speeding cars, trucks and buses with confident authority and measured control. On a sidewalk, pickpockets work a crowd of onlookers, distracted by a young woman in lingerie as she moves behind a storefront window. In a jewelry store around the corner, Elsa Kramer (Betty Amann) examines several large diamonds on a velvet cloth while the gray-haired jeweler stands waiting. She flirts with the old man and while he blushes, she cleverly steals a jewel. Within seconds of her leaving the jeweler's son chases Elsa down and summons the closest policeman, which happens to be Albert. When the diamond is found (on the tip of Elsa's umbrella) Albert arrests her and they rush outside to a waiting car. Through her histrionics, Elsa persuades Albert to take her home so she can collect her identification papers. As they enter her apartment, the implied understanding of Elsa's profession is followed by Albert's seduction, and his moral foundations crumble.

Hostility in a modern world, consuming sexuality, crime, and its consequences are the solid building blocks of Joe May's Asphalt, produced by Erich Pommer, photographed by Günther Rittau (Siegfried, 1924 Metropolis 1927, The Blue Angel 1930), with art direction by Erich Kettelhut (The Indian Tomb 1921, Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler 1922, Metropolis & Berlin, Symphony of a Big City 1927). Lotte Eisner observed that Asphalt " … is a cogent example of the use that Ufa commercial films made of the results of artistic research. May uses everything." A dark and moody love story, Asphalt clearly influenced and anticipates the coming of film noir.

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