Varieté

Former trapeze artist Huller leaves his wife and child to go to Berlin with the younger and seductive Berta-Marie. Together they obtain an engagement at the Berlin Wintergarten, where—performing as a trio with aerial acrobat Artinelli—they become a major attraction. Until Huller realizes that Berta-Marie is cheating on him with their partner…
The overt voyeuristic appeal that Berta-Marie provokes as a dancer is translated by Dupont into pure artifice: for Varieté, he also lets Karl Freund’s “unleashed” camera execute dizzying feats between heaven and earth. Among the visual highlights of this classic of Weimar cinema, which premiered 100 years ago, are the shots in which the camera looks down at the audience in the stalls from a swinging trapeze.

With an introduction by Florian Wrobel.
With live musical accompaniment by Heidi Fial, Emil Kindlein, Christoph Pruckner.

Version: German intertitles
Restoration by the Filmarchiv Austria in cooperation with the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation