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Social drama

Joyless Street

Year
1925
Length
148 minWikidata 148-minute listing Version sources ↓

In inflation-stricken Vienna, two neighbouring women face hunger, exploitation, and sharply unequal chances of escape.

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Country
Germany
Language
German
BleakTense Best saved for later · For patient viewers Social drama
An empty market stall faces a brightly lit shop across a wet street.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

What to expect

Pabst moves away from expressionist fantasy towards social surfaces: queues, meat, clothing, rooms, and money. Garbo and Asta Nielsen give different human scales to a street where scarcity reorganises morality.

How to ease in

The surviving versions vary, and the narrative can feel fragmented. Follow Grete’s family and Maria’s decline, using the butcher’s queue and the nightclub as recurring social centres.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes sexual exploitation, poverty, hunger, domestic abuse, attempted suicide, prostitution, violence, and incomplete or variant surviving presentations.
Momo's Note May contain spoilers Who is Momo? →
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The street makes dignity depend on access to food, fabric, and a door that closes. I keep noticing how economic violence arrives disguised as an individual moral choice.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

Wikidata 148-minute listing 148 min 148 minutes reproduces the single duration stated by the source. The listing does not identify a cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration. Source: Wikidata — Joyless Street Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-22

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