One of the last great silent films to come out of the German industry, Asphalt is also a revelation for anyone who has not seen the work of director Joe May. Less cynical than noir generally is, but full of its recognition of the corruption that goes on beneath the city’s glitter, Asphalt is an excellent opportunity to glimpse several of the central elements of what would soon become noir in the hands of one of Germany’s earliest filmmakers.

Asphalt was shot right on the cusp of the sound film’s emergence in Germany; 1930 would see the release of von Sternberg’s first sound film, The Blue Angel, photographed by Asphalt‘s lensman, Günther Rittau. Watching May’s film, it’s easy to imagine hearing its characters talking, but with Rittau’s fluid camerawork and the astonishing naturalism of the acting, one can only imagine such a film being made maybe ten to fifteen years later as a very tightly conceived Hollywood noir. It would take the American film industry that long to recover — in the face of the technical strictures of sound — the visual and dramatic sophistication on display in Asphalt (with exception being made for the best of von Sternberg’s Hollywood films).