“Not even one attempt to provide his characters with a psychological veneer, as three great German contemporary of his would do in 1921. No inner poetry, circular construction, plastic expression: he follows a faithful depiction of the script. If we think about Lubitsch is just to stress that here he did not take advantage of a scene where the male heroe is more interested in the maid than his fiancée […]. What does Kertesz do of his non existing characters, his puppets? He makes them come and go, and move one in relation with the other. He uses variety of takes, which was rare for his time, constantly moving without interruption from close-ups to wide shot, highlighting the décor and setting. The inserts are meaningful and integrated within the plot as much as the sensational episodes. Kertesz is excellent in breaking up the story, as when with a brutal interruption he discards the heroin to dwelve on the evil brother and the mother […] Perfectly at ease with this type of development, he also tries his hands with three short flash-backs – certainly consistent with melodramatic rules – and inserts within one of them a second single-frame flash-back (the dead mother). This narrative approach, which would reach its heights in Passage to Marseilles […] is more natural for him than for the majority of his colleagues, even the ones that would become with him the masters of Hollywood action cinema. This film, where the only rule is to avoid any slow down, has two action sequences of a train accident and the final chase, ending on the chimney of a factory blown up by the police – an easy solution to snare out the haunted brother – as key points from a spectacular perspective. They are the trademark of an eternal ambition of European cinema: challenging Hollywood in its own turf. Emigrants brought to Hollywood the improvement of an autonomous technique, and found thenselves facing the well-rooted need for a pure form, even in the most confused stories. The following year with Kertesz’s subsequent film, Sodom und Gomorrha Sascha Film found its greatest international success. Judging from what has remained of that blockbuster feature, it is a much less interesting and foretelling work if compared with Wege des Schreckens”.

Bernard Eisenschitz