The Joyless Street

Joyless Street (German: Die freudlose Gasse, 1925) is a film directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in Germany, based on the novel by Hugo Bettauer, and is one of the first films of the "New Objectivity“ movement. It stars Greta Garbo in her second starring role and bringing her international fame.The film is often described as a morality story in which the fallen woman suffers for her sins, while the more virtuous woman gets the happy end."

In 1921 in the poverty-stricken part of town called Melchiorgasse in Austria inhabited by impoverished gentry and blue-collar workers Mrs. Greifer runs a fashion boutique and a nightclub patronized by the wealthier class of Vienna. Annexed to the nightclub is "Merkl“ hotel, a by-the-hour establishment, in which the women of the nightclub prostitute themselves in order to pay back their debts to Frau Greifer.

The film follows the plights of two women from the same neighborhood in their attempts to pull themselves out of the rubble of postwar hyperinflation: Marie, who lives in abject poverty, succumbs to the lure of prostitution. Grete, from a struggling family used to better circumstances, takes the higher road..........