A buttoned-up schoolteacher is driven to insanity by obsessive desire, following a chance encounter with a chanteuse at a local cabaret. Headliner Lola Lola, brought to sparkling life by Dietrich – von Sternberg’s regular on-screen collaborator – soon seduces him from his respectable world and into Berlin’s erotic subterranea. Jannings is pitiful yet sympathetic as a hapless stooge unable to resist Lola’s world, in all its glamour and filth. Screen: NFT2. Screening details: English language subtitles.
