Asta Nielsen’s eroticism is particularly valuable because it is thoroughly spiritual. Her eyes are the most important thing, not her flesh. Indeed, she has no flesh. Her abstract leanness is a single quivering nerve with a distorted mouth and two burning eyes. She is never undressed, she never shows her thighs like Anita Berber (whose face and rear can hardly be told apart), and yet this dancing vice could study under Asta Nielsen. With all her belly dancing, she is nothing but a lamb next to a fully dressed Asta Nielsen. For the latter can *look* obscene disrobement, and she can flash a smile that the police would have to impound as pornography. This spiritualized eroticism is dangerous and demonic, because it can penetrate through any layer of clothing.
Bela Balasz, "The Eroticism of Asta Nielsen," 1923
