The Joyless Street (DVD)

This early silent classic from director G.W. Pabst (who would go on to make the acclaimed Pandora's Box and Diary of A Lost Street), follows the desperate lives of people inhabiting a single street in bleak, post-World War I Vienna. Highly-controversial and heavily-censored at the time of its release, the Austrian-made film features Asta Nielsen as a desperate woman forced into prostitution to provide for her family. Warner Krauss stars as the street's domineering butcher, while a young Greta Garbo also features in what is said to have been her personal favorite role; it was also her last before coming to America, where far greater fame awaited her.