Critics reviews

It was made towards the end of the German Expressionist movement, at a time when increasing advances in film technique could be used to tell disturbingly simple stories. Dupont and his celebrated cinematographer Karl Freund employ a web of complex camera movements to depict people who are fundamentally entrapped.

The film is a technical marvel, and the sense of atmosphere easily bests the leaden theatrics of Benjamin Christensen's THE DEVIL'S CIRCUS (1926). The razzle-dazzle is on par with Dupont's subsequent PICADILLY (1929), but viewers today are more likely to view VARIETÉ in the context of Emil Jannings' career rather than Dupont's.

What is most striking now is the film's focus on voyeurism. One scene in which we see a topless acrobat reflected in the opera glasses of her rapt audience is strongly reminiscent of the opening sequence of Hitchcock's debut film The Pleasure Garden (1925); others bring to mind The Ring (1927), Hitchcock's first film for British International Pictures (where Dupont went on to make Piccadilly in 1929).

This was the age of the "unchained camera," and while Dupont doesn't scale the heights of Murnau's The Last Laugh, he seems determined to try, with cameraman Karl Freund devising ingenious rigs which allow us to swing on the trapeze alongside the actors, swooping over the heads of the crowd.

Beneath the film's melodramatic plot about romantic jealousy and betrayal is a sophisticated study of erotic desire; some of Dupont's close-ups of faces overwhelmed by fascination can still inspire shocks of recognition.