Erotikon

A Czech film Gustav Machatý made at the end of the silent era. Andrea, the daughter of a railway gatekeeper, spends the night with a wealthy passenger stranded there after missing his train. He leaves, she is pregnant, she marries another man and moves to Prague, and years later she meets the same man again. The nerve of the film is in the telling rather than the story: instead of explaining events Machatý looks at faces, hands, rain and objects, and barely uses an intertitle. Its way of making sexuality felt without showing it was striking for its moment. Ita Rina's Andrea is at the centre, and a few years later the director would cause far more argument with Ecstasy.