The film which made Altenberg, a well-known Viennese intellectual and writer, cry so profusely, as we know from his famous manifesto against the literary pretension of the cinema in the early teens, has finally been identified: it was without a doubt Le Haleur.
«The people should rise in defence of the cinema and not let themselves be fooled by the clowns of psychologizing literature. My tender young lady friend of fifteen, and I, aged fifty-two, both cried profusely watching the sketch «Under the starry sky», in which a poor French barge hauler drags his dead bride slowly and heavily! Heaven help you who pretend that we become enthusiastic with an ‘arid heart’ for your ‘arid intellect’. We don’t have to and we don’t want to!»
Peter Altenberg, Das Kino, 1912, reprint in Fritz Güttinger, Kein Tag ohne Kino, 1984