“She’s an angel,” says drunk womanizer Paul Kahr (Curd Jürgens) about his forgiving wife Ina (Elisabeth Müller) in flashback in G.W. Pabst’s Das Bekenntnis der Ina Kahr (US: Afraid to Love), which opens with crowds racing upstairs to claim seats in a courtroom where Ina is on trial for murdering him. Having tolerated her husband’s constant infidelity and emotional abuse for years, Ina refuses to speak on the stand, simply acknowledging that she poisoned him and awaiting her fate, which is made horrifyingly vivid by the restraint, transport, and execution of her Death Row neighbor who had murdered her own child. Only Ina’s devoted father, Dr. Pleyer (Albert Lieven), during a break from the trial, is able to persuade her to tell them her story, which we follow in flashback for the remainder of the film. Anders’ low-key lighting, most notably in the dramatic, capacious prison, adds sublime energy to Ina’s memories, whether it’s the couple’s romantic walk into the moonlit, fog-bound woods or a jazzy club filled with inebriated patrons, while Halletz’s score incorporates soft bass, keyboard chords, and singing strings to enhance the atmosphere of fatalism.