There is a sequence in E.G. Hoch's Mensch Versus Mittwoch in which Eli, played with brilliant care by Emil Jannings, leaves a bar and walks drunkenly down a Berlin alleyway. He is set upon by an unseen assailant, who beats him to a bloody mess. The attack is shown reflected in the eye of a cat, who watches the action before turning away to toy with a dying mouse. It is such an extravagant piece of camera-work, stepping way beyond the usual stark theatricals of the Weimar Expressionists towards something quite new, that it threatens to rip the film almost completely away from its own narrative. [...]