Showing posts with label Andy Warhol Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andy Warhol Museum. Show all posts

Friday, November 2, 2012

Louise Brooks film screens at Andy Warhol Museum

There are few pop culture icons like Louise Brooks . . . and Andy Warhol. Each is legendary. Each, in ways, symbolize their time.

The silent film star and the pop artist come together on November 2 when the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania screens the gender-bending 1928 Louise Brooks' film, Beggars of Life. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Pittsburgh's Daryl Fleming and friends.

Pop art colors define this vintage lobby card
Brooks’ singular beauty, charisma and naturalness helped make her a popular star in the 1920s. The bobbed hair actress was best known for her roles in light romantic comedies like Love Em and Leave Em (1926) and A Girl in Every Port (1928). Her dramatic role in Beggars of Life proved to be something different.

Directed by William Wellman the year after he made Wings (the first film to win an Academy Award), Beggars of Life is a gripping drama about a girl (played by Brooks) dressed as a boy who flees the law after killing her abusive stepfather. On the run, she rides the rails through a male dominated hobo underworld in which danger is always close at hand. Wallace Berry and Richard Arlen also star.

In its review, the New York Morning Telegraph wrote, "Louise Brooks, in a complete departure from the pert flapper that it has been her wont to portray, here definitely places herself on the map as a fine actress. Her characterizations, drawn with the utmost simplicity, is genuinely affecting."

Quinn Martin of the New York World added, "Here we have Louise Brooks, that handsome brunette, playing the part of a fugitive from justice, and playing as if she meant it, and with a certain impressive authority and manner. This is the best acting this remarkable young woman has done."

Beggars of Life features Brooks' best acting and proved to be her best film prior to heading off to Germany to star in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (both 1929). It is on those two films, each directed by G.W. Pabst, that Brooks' iconic reputation rests.

For this special screening, the Warhol Museum continues its partnership with the George Eastman House, the world-renowned photograph and motion picture archive in Rochester, New York. The screening is part of a series of seldom shown classic films, "Unseen Treasures from The George Eastman House."

The Beggars of Life screening marks the second time the Warhol Museum has partnered with the Eastman House to show a Brooks' film in Pittsburgh. Back in December of 2008, the Warhol Museum screened the 1930 Brooks' film, Prix de Beauté.

Pop art colors define this vintage lobby card
 For more info: Beggars of Life (b/w, 81 minutes) will be shown on Friday, November 2 at 8:00 p.m at The Warhol Theater in The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Museum will screen a recently restored, 35mm archival print, with live musical accompaniment. Additional details and ticket availability can be found at http://www.warhol.org/webcalendar/event.aspx?id=7162

Friday, September 21, 2012

Beggars of Life with Louise Brooks screens at Andy Warhol Museum

Beggars of Life (1928), the sensational William Wellman directed film starring Louise Brooks, will be shown at the Andy Warhol Museum (117 Sandusky Street) in Pittsburgh, PA on Friday November 2nd. The screening is part of a series of films called "Unseen Treasures from The George Eastman House." The Warhol will screen a newly restored, 35mm archival print of the 81 minute silent film with live musical accompaniment. More information about this special event can be found on the Warhol Museum website

The event description reads "Louise Brooks’ penetrating charisma and transcendent naturalness made her an icon of 1920s silent cinema.  In director William Wellman's early Depression-era portrait of transient life, she gave one of her absolute strongest performances during her brief stint in the Hollywood, playing a girl who must go on the run after killing her abusive stepfather in self-defense. Fleeing, she meets the handsome drifter Richard Arlen and the two hit the road, one step ahead of the law and soon encounter Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery), a tough, high-spirited hobo. Together they ride the rails, with Brooks dressed as a boy, through a hobo underworld where danger is always close at hand. This empathetic, darkly realistic drama is loaded with stunning visuals and is one of the great late silent-era features.  The Warhol Museum continues its partnership with the world-renowned photograph and motion picture archives, George Eastman House, to bring rarely shown silent and early sound masterpieces from its extensive collection exclusively to Pittsburgh."

Here is another lobby card for the film, which to my eye, contains a few stylistic touches which anticipate Pop art. I think Warhol would have liked them.


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