One of only three female directors represented in this collection, Denmark’s Bodil Ipsen launched her career with Afsporet (US: Derailed), a dark and dreamy film that seems to have tested the waters for her subsequent crime films, most importantly Murder Melody (1944). Ipsen and her team fabricated thick atmosphere on studio sets, most notably the foggy waterfront where Esther Berthelsen (Illona Wieselmann) passes out, gets mugged, and is awoken by a kind-looking, older woman to discover that she has lost her memory entirely. This scene is where the film pivots from a well-to-do milieu in which a bright, confident Esther is universally admired by friends and acquaintances, especially her prominent father, Professor Bøgh (Poul Reumert), to an underworld hellhole in which a timid, amnesiac Esther is forced to live in a den of aggressive prostitutes and petty criminals who assume Esther to be a low-life just like them. Recently released from prison, gangster Janus Jensen (Ebbe Rode) falls for Esther, who returns his affections, but their romance will face threats from Jensen’s vengeful ex-girlfriend Lotte (the wonderfully obnoxious Sigrid Horne-Rasmussen) and the inevitable revelation of Esther’s true identity. Despite suffering some inconsistency of tone, including a few unnecessary diversions to light comedy, the film mostly lands on criminal melodrama with plenty of emphasis on the “melo,” particularly in the lead performances and Gyldmark’s unusually dissonant, cello- and clarinet-accented score.