To avoid arrest, the thief "Brillantenelse" seduces the young police constable Holk, who promptly refrains from pressing charges. When he wants to visit Else again, he gets involved in a scuffle with her boyfriend, a wanted criminal. Holk kills him in self-defense and is then arrested by his father, the chief constable.

This highlight of German silent cinema takes us back to the electrifying Berlin of the late 1920s. The melodrama ASPHALT, one of Ufa's top productions, for which producer Erich Pommer built Europe's largest studio sets in the Babelsberg studios, became the prototype of urban cinema. Like F. W. Murnau in THE LAST MAN, director Joe May used the "unleashed camera" and had a mobile tower construction built for the camera for the sophisticated shots, which combined exterior and interior shots in a revolutionary way. This resulted in spectacular images that draw the viewer into the action in a suggestive way. At the same time, ASPHALT is a masterpiece of lighting that lends a mysterious sensuality to the features of femme fatale Betty Amann as jewel thief Else.

"A realistic silent film melodrama that loses its colportage character through convincing acting and outstanding camerawork." (Encyclopedia of International Film)

Director: Joe May, DE 1929, 95 min, FSK: from 0, with Gustav Fröhlich, Else Heller, Albert Steinrück.
A film from the collection of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden (www.murnau-stiftung.de).

The screening is part of the exhibition "Big Screen. Film Posters of All Times" at the Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, which can be seen in the exhibition hall of the Kulturforum until March 3, 2024. The film will be accompanied live on the Mighty Wurlitzer theater organ by Anna Vavilkina.