| Variety | |
| Based On: | The Oath of Stephan Huller by Felix Hollaender |
| Director: | Ewald Andre Dupont |
| Producer: | Erich Pommer |
Variety (German: '''Varieté''' pronounced as /de/, also known by the alternative titles Jealousy or Vaudeville) is a 1925 German silent drama film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont based on the 1912 novel The Oath of Stephan Huller by Felix Hollaender.[1]
The trapeze scenes are set in the Berlin Wintergarten theatre. The camera swings from long shot to close-up, like the acrobats.[2]
The story was loosely remade by Dupont as the 1931 German sound film Salto Mortale.
In the film, Jannings portrays "Boss Huller", a former trapeze artist who was badly injured in a fall from the high wire and who now runs a seedy carnival with his wife (Maly Delschaft) and their child. Huller insists that the family take in a beautiful stranger (Lya De Putti) as a new sideshow dancer, with whom he develops a new trapeze number. He falls in love with the new star, and the story ends in tragedy.
The film was heavily censored when it was released in the United States (except for New York) by excising the entire first reel, "thus destroying the motivation of the tragedy, implying that the acrobat was married to his Eurasian temptress."[3]
The film is noted for its innovative camerawork with highly expressive movement through space, accomplished by the expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund.[4]
Decades later, the German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck cites being unexpectedly exposed to the film as a child of four as the start of his interest in the medium.[5]
This film is believed to contain the first documentation of unicycle hockey – it features a short sequence showing two people playing the game.