Asphalt

Asphalt (1929) is a late Weimar silent classic from director Joe May that you can watch online on iFILM, set in Berlin against the constant roar of city traffic.

Officer Holk (Gustav Fröhlich) catches a young woman, Else (Betty Amann, in her most celebrated screen performance), pocketing jewelry from a shop. She talks her way out of it. He lets her go. He cannot stop thinking about her. What starts as a routine arrest becomes something far harder to untangle — especially when Else's criminal ex-lover, fresh from a Parisian bank job, comes back into the picture.

Joe May builds the film around the textures of the city: wet cobblestones, neon spilling across a rain-slicked street, the hum of modern Berlin at night. Fatalistic and visually precise, this is a showcase for what the German studio system could do at its peak. Stream Asphalt (1929) online on iFILM.