China invented neorealism decades early, it's like gunpowder all over again.
Deeply impressed by Ruan Lingyu's justly legendary acting, this is the oldest film I can think of in which so much time is spent watching the main character think, the offhand way she accepts indignities and the importance of her small triumphs. It's a performance at odds with the more melodramatic excesses of the plot, but sometimes life really is just a bunch of bad things happening to you until it ends, and sometimes it's worthwhile to be confronted with that.
