Director Gustav Machatý helped launch the young Austrian actress Hedy Kiesler, later known as Hedy Lamarr, to worldwide fame with this melodrama about breaking out of an unhappy marriage. Atmospherically dense with influences of cinematic modernism, the film was scandalous in its day: Even more than the nude scenes and the close-ups of female lust, the extramarital affair between Adam and Eva provoked calls for censorship.
(Arsenal Kino)