Anita: Dances of Vice

On a dirty grey street in Berlin, a crowd gathers round an eccentric old woman who is performing a strip-tease. Dragged off to a psychiatric hospital, she demands cocaine instead of thorazine, tries to seduce everyone in sight, and insists that she is the legendary dancer Anita Berber, darling of the decadent '20s. Suddenly, in true Wizard of Oz style, the film departs from monochrome reality into the colour-drenched world of the woman's fantasies, a wildly exaggerated evocation of Weimar Berlin filmed in full-blown expressionist style. The young Anita (Blum) and her partner Droste (Honesseau) set out to be the most perverse people in the world, develop a reputation for pornographic stage performances, and have sex with anything that moves. Inevitably, both come to bad ends: Droste arrested for fraud, Anita dying of TB. The identity of the old woman (Huber) is never certain. Her belief in her own fantasy is unshakeable; and von Praunheim's film, visually astounding and performed with hilarious conviction, is an exhilarating testament to the power of the imagination.