The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)

Before plunging headlong into the Freudian sexuality of Pandora's Box, German filmmaker G. W. Pabst offered the impressionistic social document Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (The Love of Jeanne Ney). Based on a sturm-und-drang story by Ilya Ehrenberg, the film travels from the Crimea to Paris and back again in unfolding a sprawling tale of sociological upheaval. The events are seen through the eyes of Jeanne Ney (Edith Hehanne), who is forced to flee her Russian homeland when her Communist lover kills her diplomat father. The romance between Jeanne and her politicized paramour irrevocably links the lure of radicalism with the call of the flesh. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi