Georg Wilhelm Pabst (or GW Pabst, born in 1885) was one of the great German filmmakers during the silent period. He established his name with his first film, the drama of greed "The Treasure" (1923), but with the third one, "The Joyless Street" (1925) he revealed himself as a major force of the "New Objectivity", beyond the distortions of expressionism, touching the social problems of Germany, between the two great wars. He continued with "Mysteries of a Soul" (1926) and "The Love of Jeanne Ney" (1927), whose recent vision motivates these notes; then gave a masterstroke with "Pandora's Box" (1929), which led Louise Brooks to immortality, and when sound came, in 1930 he released the antiwar drama" Frontline 1918 ", which was banned by the Nazis, made the film version of "The 3-Penny Opera" (1931) by Brecht and Weil, followed by a drama of Franco-German solidarity, "Camaraderie" (1931); an incursion into fantastic cinema with "L'Atlantide" (1932), and his own reading of Cervantes' "Don Quixote" (1933). Although he did not stop working and made more films of value, Pabst saw his career affected by the rise of the Nazis, when he had to move between Berlin, Paris, Hollywood and Vienna, where he died in 1967.
The romantic account of "The Love of Jeanne Ney" goes from Ukraine to France, following the daughter of a French diplomat who is in love with a Bolshevik. The couple reunites in Paris after several vicissitudes. The characters include Jeanne's uncle, owner of a research firm, his blind daughter (Brigitte Helm, the Maria of "Metropolis"), a North American millionaire who has lost an invaluable diamond, and a Russian informer who sells to the highest bidder. There are moments of great visual force, as the scene in which the blind girl discovers the corpse of her father and the initial scenes of the Russian revolution.
However, the reason that motivates me to write about the film is, above all, extraordinary actor Fritz Rasp (1891-1976), as the ruthless snitch, fearsome as none. Rasp is an icon of the Teutonic villain: from the first time I saw him as the overwhelming "Thin Man" in Lang's "Metropolis," serving the owner of the city, every time I see him in another film, his characters are not to be trusted and his presence is intimidating: as the colonel in "Spies" and as "The Man" in "The Woman in the Moon", both by Lang, or as the Jew J. J. Peachum, "King of the Beggars", in Pabst's "The 3-Penny Opera". In "The Love of Jeanne Ney" Rasp builds the disgusting character of Khalibiev, an informant who fingers the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, and in Paris not only does he stalk Jeanne and her lover, but uses Jeanne's young blind cousin to concrete his evil plans.
As Pabst, Rasp also continued working during the Nazi period, although not acting with the frequency of the past. He had a long career, that included playing the lead in a film of the "new cinema" of West Germany, "Lina Braake" (1975), which was his last appearance in cinema.
