Physiognomic typage and the construction of the archetypal Weimar-Era Hausfrau in Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Abwege/The Devious Path

Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1928 film Abwege/The Devious Path underscores psycho-sexual tensions prevalent in the social climate of 1920s Germany and Austria. Under Pabst’s direction, the actors in The Devious Path exaggerated their performances to amplify reality, playing to self-conscious character archetypes, such as the sexually frustrated bourgeois hausfrau. Pabst’s interest in physical types also echoes the early twentieth-century revival of physiognomy in the German-speaking world, wherein ethnic and class-based characteristics were increasingly categorized according to a taxonomic system. His use of physiognomy can be said to resemble Soviet typage due to his focus on pure physical appearance. However, unlike Eisenstein, Pabst cast well-known actors and actresses, such as Brigitte Helm who had starred in the film Metropolis the previous year. Helm’s exaggerated expressions and bodily contortions bring to life the archetype of the irrational hausfrau oscillating between lust and remorse. Her portrayal provides commentary on the emergence of the New Woman in the German-speaking world of the 1920s, but also suggests a satirical critique of bourgeois society’s complex, and perhaps hypocritical, relationship with the club-going subculture that existed in Weimar culture at that time.