Employing techniques of early French impressionistic style, Germaine Dulac’s The Smiling Madame Beudet is often viewed as an early feminist film. Romantic Madame Beudet is married to a dull, insensitive oaf. She dreams of taking lovers and killing off her husband, but her plans to do him in are ironically twisted in the end.

This expressionistic example of Kammerspielfilm is a three person drama that involves a housemaid (Porten), her lover (Dieterle), and a partly paralyzed postman (Kortner) who obsessively desires the girl.  Behind the scenes were some of Germany’s shining stars: scenarist Carl Mayer, who wrote the script for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Murnau's Last Laugh, Sunrise, etc.; Leopold Jessner, one of the most progressive stage directors of the period; and Paul Leni, who later made Waxworks (1924) in Germany and The Cat and the Canary (1927) in Hollywood. Print courtesy of George Eastman House.