Brigitte Helm

In Metropolis (1927), Brigitte Helm's Maria holds our attention while an entire future city competes for it. Fritz Lang's film asks its people to express their convictions with their whole bodies, and Gustav Fröhlich's Freder sometimes seems incapable of doing anything by halves. Helm gives Maria a stillness that makes us want to keep looking. We felt relieved by her restraint, because the scenery and the broader performances were already making quite enough demands on us. It is the clearest reason to value her: she can make a quiet performance count in surroundings that offer little encouragement to be quiet.

That was her debut, and it has dominated her reputation ever since. The films that followed show how quickly a distinctive presence can become a casting habit. In Marcel L'Herbier's L'Argent (1928), she plays the scheming aristocrat Baronin Sandorf; Alraune (1928) gives her the title role of a seductive artificial woman. Her poise and cool sensuality suited these parts, though repeated casting as a vamp narrowed the opportunities to use those qualities differently. Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrovna (1929), a tragic melodrama with Helm in the title role, offers a useful next step beyond that image.

The transition to sound came in 1930, and she stopped acting in 1935. We should be wary of treating those recurring vamps as proof that coolness was all she could offer. In Metropolis, Alfred Abel's controlled Joh Fredersen and Rudolf Klein-Rogge's exaggerated Rotwang remind us that restraint is only one way of making this sort of film work. Helm's expressive face helps: she can suggest an inner conflict without making her whole body announce it, a useful ability in a film this crowded. Start with Metropolis; then give Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrovna an evening before deciding that Helm was only ever Maria.