Asphalt

Berlin at the end of the 1920s. Albert Holk, a young policeman directing traffic, is orderly and obedient to the rules, and lives with his parents. He arrests a woman named Else for a theft at a jeweller's. On the way to the station they stop at her flat first, and that pause changes everything. In one night Holk comes close to losing both his job and everything he thought he knew about himself. Joe May's silent film stars Gustav Fröhlich and Betty Amann. It is one of the last silent productions of Weimar German cinema. That Berlin's traffic, its asphalt and its crowds are central enough to give the film its title still stands out.