TONKA OF THE GALLOWS (CZECH REPUBLIC/1930/KARL ANTON)

Having made the big move to Prague, a young woman named Tonka becomes a prostitute in order to earn her keep, and quickly becomes integrated into the ways of brothel life. She returns to her countryside home with expensive gifts for her mother, but is evasive about how she acquired the money for them. She also rejoins her lover Jan who proposes marriage, an offer which has clearly been hanging over their relationship for a while. Tonka struggles to deal with her duplicitous lifestyle, and when she agrees to spend the night with a murderer who is condemned to be hanged, she is rejected even by her fellow prostitutes.

From the first moment we see Tonka, she is already a tainted woman, her reputation scuppered by her brothel connections, and as such it is difficult to know which part of her story we are to learn from. If anything, the film appears to tell us, as in Mikio Naruse’s later Morning’s Tree-Lined Street, that the bright lights of the city are a misleading augury. The scenes with Tonka in the countryside are beautiful, pleasant, summery – when the story returns to the city however, we are greeted by nocturnal shadows and noxious smoke. Slovenian actress Ita Rina, best known for her role in Erotikon, does a great job of portraying the protagonist trapped in the evil shadows of Prague. Director Karl Anton employs tropes of German Expressionism and French Impressionism in his visual arsenal, creating a melodrama with surprising emotional reach.

NEW WOMAN (CHINA/1934/CAI CHUSHENG)

Fresh from a broken marriage, Wei Ming moves to Shanghai where she becomes a music teacher and writer. Wei manages to get her book published through a friend, but it quickly transpires that the publisher is only interested in Wei’s status as a young woman. Additionally, Dr. Wang, the headmaster of the school where Wei works and the husband of her friend, takes a shining to his new employee, but fires her when she spurns his advances. Destitute and needing to support her ill daughter, Wei reluctantly becomes a prostitute, and when she discovers who her first client is, her burning shame leads her to new lows.

Partly based on the tragic life of actress and writer Ai Xia, New Woman is typical of the golden period films in its portrayal of the lower classes in Shanghai, but there is something unusual in its revelation of the facts. Though not immediately obvious, the film is a commentary on the semi-reality created by the world of cinema – Wei, substituting for Ai Xia, is taken for a ride by the promise of success, when it is only her image and sexuality that is desired. In a sinister twist of life imitating art, lead actress Ruan Lingyu, a prolific star at the time, committed suicide not too long after the release of the film, tired by the constant vigil of the press. With some bizarrely shot sequences and a disturbingly heartfelt performance by Ruan, New Woman is an unforgettably dark slice of cinema.

TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (CANADA/1988/GUY MADDIN)

Wistful Canadian director Guy Maddin’s debut feature takes place in the fictional Gimli Hospital, where two children are at their terminally ill mother’s bedside. The kids’ Icelandic grandmother, Amma, regales them with the story of Einar the Lonely, a former patient at the hospital. Einar, a fisherman afflicted with smallpox, finds comfort in conversing with his similarly poorly neighbour Gunnar, but the two men soon find themselves love rivals for the hospital’s waifish nurses. With his charming personality and fascinating past, Gunnar is the clear winner, but Einar plays the game by inventing stories even more bizarre and grotesque than Gunnar’s.

Using tropes from the silent era, as has become his trademark, Maddin creates a very textural, darkly humorous story whose conclusion is neither important nor welcomed. Thick Icelandic accents give credibility to the sham mythologies spouted by the two men, while visual motifs such as fish and a jewelled pair of scissors enliven the feverish imagery. But while one would instinctively describe the film by listing the names of directors pastiched by Maddin, the film feels startlingly novel in its design, as if German Expressionism was in need of being revisited. What is most remarkable about the film is that, while thematically it is macabre, one cannot help but be charmed by it. As outstanding and wonderfully cultish a debut as David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Tales from the Gimli Hospital is a winning combination of film styles, and Maddin’s unique manner of storytelling ensures that no single frame is wasted.

POOR JENNY (GERMANY/1912/URBAN GAD)

Jenny is a young woman from an impoverished background who works as a cleaner in various elegant residences in the city. While cleaning the stairs of a wealthy man named Eduard Reinhold, she receives an enigmatic invitation from him but decides against telling her proud parents. With the assistance of her sister, Jenny sneaks out of the house to rendezvous with Eduard, who takes her for a meal at a restaurant before inviting her back to his place. Returning home at dawn, Jenny is shocked to discover her family still awake, and the ensuing argument leaves her on the street. Seeking comfort and shelter from her wealthy lover, she is told that she is unsuitable to be seen on the arm of such a well-to-do man and, with no-one else to turn to, she takes on a series of sordid jobs before eventually committing suicide.

The word ‘poor’ in the title relates both to Jenny’s financial situation and her repeated rotten luck, and the lesson here is something along the lines of not giving into temptation, as Jenny finds herself even lower down in society than she had been before thanks to her spontaneous tryst. Legendary temptress of early cinema Asta Nielsen, star of Gad’s sensuous film The Abyss, portrays Jenny with appropriate gullibility despite being thirty at the time of filming. Though a mostly unremarkable film, (Louis Feuillade’s The Defect dealt with similar themes a year earlier), Poor Jenny does feature some interesting photography, particularly at its tragic climax.

THE DEFECT (FRANCE/1911/LOUIS FEUILLADE)

Anna Moulin is a waitress at a sleazy dancehall in Paris. When she breaks down to a customer named Dr. Perrin about wanting to leave her job, he offers her a position as a nurse at his charitable hospital. Anna accepts the post without hesitation and starts her job by bringing meals to the infirmed children. Almost immediately, Anna’s compassionate bedside manner endears herself to the patients and, impressed with her knack for the job, Perrin appoints Anna as director of the hospital, an offer she gratefully accepts. But before long, the wind is taken out of her sails as a former colleague visits the hospital, threatening to expose secrets from her past.

One often wonders if director Louis Feuillade truly thought it necessary to show some of the more tedious events in their entirety – whether it was compensating for a lack of action or just showing off a higher budget is up for debate. More time ought to have been devoted to Anna’s past, as one is left to assume the events that make Anna so ashamed of her former life. And although it is encouraging to believe that a person’s circumstances can be changed so facilely, it is hard to swallow that Perrin would employ her as a nurse based on their brief encounter at the dancehall. Of course, much of this could be forgiven by the limitations of early cinema, but one must remember that Feuillade also helmed several cinematic classics, including cult crime serial Les Vampires.

THE PEARL (BELGIUM/1929/HENRI D'URSEL)

The first and only film created by count Henri d’Ursel, The Pearl opens with a Méliès-style sequence of a diver retrieving a pearl from the seabed. It is this gemstone that becomes so sought-after throughout the film, as our unnamed protagonist seeks to procure a pearl necklace as a gift for his fiancée. When he breaks the necklace in a bike accident, his expressionless fiancée tucks a loose pearl into her stocking, leading our hero to chase her through the woods, eventually strangling her and removing an oversized pearl from her mouth. As he washes the necklace in a stream, blood appears on his hands. The man regains consciousness again, his hands now clean, and he leaves the woods for a hotel, where he finds his fiancée creeping from room to room as a thief. A somnambulist roams the rooftops.

Though not as boisterous or even as technically competent as his surrealist contemporaries, novice filmmaker d’Ursel has created a subtly subversive objet d’art here, seducing the viewer with a tale both dreamlike and realistic. The film creates a rhyme with spheres and circles (hot air balloons, wheels and tears), all evocative of the object in question. Kissa Kouprine, in the role of the thieving fiancée, imbues the film with a muted eroticism, not dissimilar to French cult actress Musidora who was known for portraying duplicitous villainesses. The film’s major weakness comes in its impatient pacing: at times we race through scenes, at others we might as well be sleepwalking ourselves.

LIMITE (BRAZIL/1931/MÁRIO PEIXOTO)

The only film by elusive writer Mário Peixoto, Limite concerns four people apparently lost at sea. Little is said about their future, but each of the castaways reflects contemplatively on the events of the past. These memories are presented to the audience as visual poems, picking up the rhythm of everyday life and the preciousness of its minutiae. In contrast to the clunky, fast-paced editing of most silent films, Limite does away with title cards and quick location changes in favour of seductively slow close-ups, buttressed by hypnagogic shots of the surrounding sea. Scant writings on the film suggest that Peixoto had paced the film thusly in mimesis of the solar system, where small objects orbit larger ones.

A film that simultaneously invites and defies analysis, Limite remained for the longest time an unseen curio, even considered lost at one point, but has enjoyed a healthy renaissance thanks to plaudits from the likes of Orson Welles and Sergei Eisenstein. It has been voted “best Brazilian film of all time” on several occasions, and it’s easy to see why. Peixoto appears to have recognised the immense potential of the moving image as an art form in its own right, reflected in the fact he felt confident enough to convey a story without intertitles. The result is a soulful bricolage of personal histories, creating a blueprint of all the potential futures. Impeccably shot and scored, Limite sidesteps the boisterous giddiness of many contemporary experimental films, resembling a wordless version of Tarkovsky’s Mirror.