Variety (1925 film)  

"A German classic of sadomasochism in a circus setting, with the master masochist actor Emil Jannings as an acrobat who leaves his wife for a foreign girl (plumply erotic, saucer-eyed Lya de Putti); he forms a trapeze act with the girl and a younger acrobat (Warwick Ward)--who inevitably seduces her. The enduring power of the movie, directed by E. A. Dupont and photographed by Karl Freund, is not in its far from original story but in the restless, subjective camera and the fast editing which make it an almost voluptuous experience. Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel and Ingmar Bergman's The Naked Night are both indebted to it. (A remake in 1935, with Hans Albers and Annabella, was negligible.) Silent." --5001 Nights at the Movies (1982) by Pauline Kael