"Geschlecht in Fesseln" or "Die Sexualnot der Strafgefangenen" or "Sex in Chains" is a German movie from 1928, so two more years until it has its 90th anniversary. The title may sound like some hardcore porn or a film by Jesus Franco, but that's not even close. This is a black-and-white silent film that was released in Germany five years before the Nazis came into power. The director and lead actor is William Dieterle and he was in his 30s when he made this one, already a successful and prolific filmmaker. He broke through in Hollywood later too and became an Oscar nominee a decade after this one here. The cast is mostly German, but you will also find Scandinavians playing major parts. It runs for 90 minutes in the version I saw, but I also saw that there are versions out there (such as the original) which are approximately 15 minutes longer. Silent films usually struggle in two departments. The first would be overacting and the second would be lack of intertitles in quantity. The film does surprisingly good on both occasions, which is rare to watch in terms of films from this time of cinema. Intertitles exist in all kinds of languages (German original, English, French...), so you can see this one wherever you come from. But in terms of the story, I was not really convinced. This film sure had some lengths and I believe it may have worked better at half the runtime, 45 minutes perhaps. It is the story of a man who accidentally kills another man and has to go to jail. This jail time changes everything for him and for his girl. It is a pretty dark movie, including topics such as killing other people and committing suicide and the suffering in here is not just of a physical, but also of an emotional nature. Younger audiences were not allowed to see it and the Nazis banned it completely, which is usually a good sign for how authentic a film is. It may be authentic, but I just never found it interesting really. Then again I may be a bit biased as I have never really liked silent films. This one is not a failure for sure, but not good enough so that I would recommend it to anybody except huge silent film lovers.
Review of Sex in Chains
