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It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Famous for nude shots of young Hedy Lamarr, and its condemnation by the Pope and the U.S. Treasury Dept., "Ecstasy" is a mostly silent film that does contain some spoken lines in German.The story starts with starry-eyed newlyweds who quickly settle into the quotidian routines of life. Eva finds herself married to a man who expresses no interest in her. Eventually, she has to make a decision to stay or leave.The film is heavy with symbolism and injects countless images of nature and the elements, especially insects, to convey the concept of good (as opposed to evil or bad). Man's connection with nature, especially in terms of doing manual labor outdoors, is also portrayed as good or sacred.The pace of the film might be considered slow, but a better term would be patient. The director painstakingly develops his tableaux and allows the camera to linger on small details. The film is also filled with thoughtful framing and perspectives. Clearly the director was willing to take chances in order to elevate the film's artistic expression.Though there are few words, the acting is solid. Not being long after the silent era, the film's presentation is based upon the silent approach without being overly expressive.Now that this film is available for viewing, we can all see what the Hayes Code was designed to protect us from.

"Ecstasy" or "Ekstase" is a German movie from over 80 years ago that runs for almost 90 minutes. This came out the very same year of the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. It is in black-and-white and does include sound. However, this movie is a perfect example of how sound in films wasn't progressed at all yet at that time. There is music all the time in this movie, but it's truly rare that we hear people speak and if they do it is almost never more than one sentence that consists of 5 words max. Looks like director Gustav Machatý was still skeptical if silent films were really a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the entire movie suffers from this weird execution in terms of dialogs. Maybe they should have gone for silent instead and just included many intertitles instead of none like they actually did.The lead actress here is Vienna-born Hedy Kiesler in her early years before her breakthrough in Hollywood and long before her star on the Walk of Fame. I think she was okay here for the most part, but I also think it was almost impossible for the actors to make this film work. It suffers too much from being caught between two eras of filmmaking and the result is a unsatisfying mash-up. I don't think "Ecstasy" is among the finest German films of the 1930s. There is no shame in admitting that these probably happened after 1935 and came from the Nazis as they are so packed with interesting political and historic references in terms of propaganda. As for "Ekstase", not recommended.

It's unlikely that anyone except those who adore silent films will appreciate any of the lyrical camera-work and busy (but scratchy) background score that accompanies this 1933 release. Although sound came into general use in 1928, there are no more than fifty words spoken to tell the story of a woman, unhappily married, who deserts her husband for a younger man after a romantic interlude in the woods.The most vividly photographed scene has the jealous husband giving a lift to the young man for a ride into town, proceeding to drive normally until he realizes the man is his wife's lover. In a frenzy of jealousy, he drives at top speed toward a railroad crossing but changes his mind at the last moment, losing his nerve. It's probably the most tension-filled scene in the otherwise decidedly slow-moving and obviously contrived story.HEDY LAMARR is given the sort of close-up treatment lavished on Marlene Dietrich by her discoverer, but her beauty had not yet been refined by the cosmeticians as they were when she was transported to Hollywood. Her performance consists mostly of looking sad and morose while mourning the loss of her marriage with only brief glimpses of a smile when she finds her true love (ARIBERT MOG), the handsome young stud who retrieves her clothes after a nude swim.The swimming scene is very brief, discreetly photographed, and not worth all the heat it apparently generated. The love-making scene, later on, is also artfully photographed with the sort of lyrical photography evident throughout most of the film--artfully so. More is left to the imagination with the use of symbolism--and this is the sort of thing that has others proclaiming the film is some kind of lyrical masterpiece.Not so. It's disappointing, primitively crude in its sound portions (including the laborious symphonic music in the background) and certainly Miss Lamarr is fortunate that Louis B. Mayer saw the film and on the basis of it, gave her a career in Hollywood. He must have seen something in her work that I didn't.It's apparent that this was conceived as a silent film with the camera doing all the work. The jarring "workers" scene at the conclusion goes on for too long and is a jarring intrusion where none is needed. It fails to end the film on the proper note.

There's nothing new about the story. Naive young Emma Bovary married older man, finds he's not very exciting, leaves older man, finds younger man, drops mescaline, smokes rainbow, paints political slogans on body, goes back to older man -- no, he dies, that's right, of a "self-inflicted gunshot wound" -- nibbles madeleine cake dipped in tea, broods over lost love who dumped her for cheerleader, meets movie mogul, is morphed into Hedy Lamarr, is busted for shoplifting -- and the rest you know.I hadn't seen this for a generation. The last print I saw was chopped to pieces and was a lousy print. This one, which appeared on Turner Classic Movies, is about as good as we're likely to get now. And it's not bad either.Definitely a chick flick though, rather like "Lady Chatterly's Lover" or any one of a number of stories with similar themes. The horny young man is not named Count Vronsky but he might as well be.The director, whom I'd never heard of, does the best he can with this slightly shapeless script. I don't mean the nude scenes which by today's standards are dismissible. I mean the way he allows Hedy Keisler turn away from the camera and hide her face behind a door jamb when she must register shock and guilt. And -- good grief -- what he does with symbolism! When the young couple are developing the hots for each other -- let me think -- he's got a bee pollinating a flower, a male horse huffing and puffing around a mare in estrus, a rising wind, a burning lantern -- please, I'm trying to remember. Yes, when she is suddenly rendered virgo no-longer intacta, her pearl necklace breaks and the pearls roll around on the floor.The old guy knows who the young guy is and gives him a ride in his six-cylinder convertible. The car picks up speed in a truly excitingly photographed and very tense scene as the old driver is deciding whether or not to kill them both by running into a train. He stops short, at the same time as the locomotive, and the locomotive boiler releases its pressure in a plume of steam and a terrifyingly exhausted hiss.Not much acting is called for, this being on the cusp of talking and silent movies at that time and in that place. Hedy Lamarr was only twenty and a little plumper and sexier than we are used to seeing her, though that description doesn't extend to her bosom, kind of a nice touch.It's worth seeing. It's not just an historical curiosity. If you're in the right mood you'll be caught up in the story, sad as it is.