A favourite scene featuring light for Hanukkah and Christmas.

Alan “How long will I live?”

Cesare “Till the break of dawn.”

Eva (Hedy Lamarr) hangs her clothes over her horse's back, then – cut through a wonderfully voyeuristic moment – goes swimming in a lake. The foal, still carrying Eva's outfit, wanders off to find a stallion.

 

Ekstase is full of not so subtle, beautifully framed innuendo. #Horses are a recurring theme and make me wonder if it inspired the mustangs sequence in John Huston's The Misfits (1961), another story of doomed passion.

Europeans are not too worried about certain things. Having a body for instance is something good. Instead of shame, you take care for it with regular exercise and plenty of fresh air. Preferably both. In Germany this is called #Freikörperkultur, sometimes confused with nudism.

 

Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit is a display of the human in various stages of exercise and undress. We see sportspeople – including future-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller and then-movie mountaineer Leni Riefenstahl – world leaders (Rockefeller and Mussolini, though the latter was cut from re-releases) and dancers such as Josephine Baker, Baku Ishii, and the scandalous Anita Berber. The film was mostly aimed at women, who by then were part of the workforce, sitting at desks in modern Metropolises. So modern it was that people were encouraged to complete their Wege-collection of trading cards, which came with their cigarettes. Good thing they're all #outdoors.