"Ecstasy" or "Ekstase" is a German movie from over 80 years ago that runs for almost 90 minutes. This came out the very same year of the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. It is in black-and-white and does include sound. However, this movie is a perfect example of how sound in films wasn't progressed at all yet at that time. There is music all the time in this movie, but it's truly rare that we hear people speak and if they do it is almost never more than one sentence that consists of 5 words max. Looks like director Gustav Machatý was still skeptical if silent films were really a thing of the past. Unfortunately, the entire movie suffers from this weird execution in terms of dialogs. Maybe they should have gone for silent instead and just included many intertitles instead of none like they actually did.The lead actress here is Vienna-born Hedy Kiesler in her early years before her breakthrough in Hollywood and long before her star on the Walk of Fame. I think she was okay here for the most part, but I also think it was almost impossible for the actors to make this film work. It suffers too much from being caught between two eras of filmmaking and the result is a unsatisfying mash-up. I don't think "Ecstasy" is among the finest German films of the 1930s. There is no shame in admitting that these probably happened after 1935 and came from the Nazis as they are so packed with interesting political and historic references in terms of propaganda. As for "Ekstase", not recommended.

Reviewers have struggled with the lack of dialogue and the lavish use of symbolism, both of which force you to interpret the film as a visual experience. Most seem baffled, embarrassed or bored by the long wordless finale. Consider what has happened to the principals: the husband Emil, after failing to drive into a train on a level crossing, has shot himself; the divorced wife Eva, after failing to throw herself under a train like Anna Karenina, has disappeared; but her lover, the surveyor Adam, still has his road to build. So it's back to the job for him and his team, stripped to the waist under the summer sun. We get a celebration of physical work in the open: breaking ground with picks and drills, moving spoil, sawing timber. Even the respectably covered gypsy woman with her children is chipping stone. After an introverted and tragic story of thwarted passion among the rich, here are ordinary people doing an honest day's labour.And the final shot of a happy and sexy Eva with a baby? If it's meant to be real, or just Adam's fantasy, we're left to guess. But isn't it a celebration of fulfilment and of new life?Also, isn't the end a reprise of the old story in the book of Genesis? After their disobedience, Adam and Eve are both cursed. He must toil at the ground to make his living and sweat before he can eat. She will suffer the pangs of childbirth, but will still want to be with her man.

Ecstacy (1933) ** (out of 4) Extremely bizarre Czechoslovakian film features Hedy Lamarr as a new wife who has an affair because her husband isn't living up to her sexual passions. This film was quite controversial when released and it remains rather shocking due to how much sexuality and nudity there is. We've all seen pre-codes from Hollywood but this film here puts them to shame because there are countless love scenes. The most infamous moment is Lamarr's skinny dipping scene, which ends with her climbing out of the water and chasing her horse in the nude. I had heard that there was nudity here but I really didn't expect as much as there was. We see several shots of her breasts as well as a full frontal shot, which certainly wasn't the norm them. Outside of these moments the film is rather tiresome. It's party sound and part silent but I think it's clear that there's more style than substance here. The story itself is rather bland and wasn't anything new even for 1933 standards. The film, on a technical level, is very good and it's clear that it was influenced by German cinema of the time. Lamarr is good in her role but she isn't given too much to do outside the sexual nature of the story.

I gather at least a few people watched it on Sept.2 on TCM. If you did you know that Hedy had to change her name to avoid being associated with this movie when she came the U.S. It was a huge scandal and I gather that the original release in the U.S. was so chopped up by censors that it was practically unintelligible. I watched because I had just seen a documentary on "bad women", actresses in the U.S. pre- movie censorship board set up in the early '30s. It looked to me as though they got away with a lot more than Hedy's most "sensational" shots in "Ecstasy". In fact Hedy looked positively innocent in this, by today's standards, and it was nice to see her early unspoiled beauty. It was a nice, lyrical movie to relax to. I loved it for what it was: a simple romance. I watched it after pre- recording it during a sleepless early A.M. I would love to see the first version released in the U.S. for comparison's sake.