In this film, Humbert is on the trail of his own history. Wolfsgrub is the name of the house where Humbert's mother lives, and though she is getting on in years, she becomes young again as she answers her son's questions.
This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other.
Something very common in our days, an adolescent who does not find communication with her mother or stepfather falls into a depression that drags her down paths of difficult return.
Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an industrial area in lower Manhattan.
Nathaniel Box, a self-styled prophet, along with his daughter Barbara and her fiancé Curtis, holds a night time press conference in an underground car park, devoutly believing that "a new Messiah for a New Age" will appear there before dawn - and their wait does not go unrewarded.