System Never Fails Stone

The empathetic, hard-hitting tales told in Die Verrufenene (Der fünfte Stand) (a.k.a. The Slums of Berlin) and Die Unehelichen (a.k.a. Children of No Importance) deal with Germany's disenfranchised in a realistic, gritty manner while still adhering to the melodramatic conventions of the day. Although Lamprect enjoyed a long and varied career behind the camera, he was most active as a passionate movie collector and champion of film preservation. The liner notes accompanying this set make it clear that it's hard to apply the auteur theory to someone like Lamprecht, but these particular films demonstrate handily that the director had a keen interest in the medium. As message pictures, they tend towards the preachy and sentimental, and yet there's also a "try something and see if it works" mentality at play here that makes them of great interest to silent fans.