Based on a best-selling novel and a huge success when it was released, The Joyless Street, which features a magnetic performance by a very young Greta Garbo, offers a stark depiction of post-WWI, inflation-driven Vienna, balancing its multi-person narrative with an exciting realism that renders the melodrama of the plot deeply moving. Taking place entirely on the street of the title, Pabst’s film juxtaposes the trials of the desperately poor with the nihilistic pleasure seeking of the moneyed class, emphasizing the intersection of public and private life in the city and making explicit the link between economic and moral ruin.