Saturday, March 10, 2018

Pandora's Box (under the title LouLou) shows in Paris tomorrow, March 11

Pandora's Box (under the title LouLou) will be shown in Paris, France on March 11 in a special event put on by La cinémathèque française. More information about this event can be found HERE. The French language information about the vent is presented below, followed by a Google translation.


Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Allemagne / 1929 / 134 min
D'après Die Büchse der Pandora et Erdgeist de Frank Wedekind.

Avec Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Alice Roberts.

Loulou, orpheline perverse et manipulatrice, devient la maîtresse d'un directeur de journal, le docteur Schön, mais son autre amant voudrait qu'elle soit à lui seul. [Loulou, a perverted and manipulative orphan, becomes the mistress of a newspaper editor, Dr. Schön, but her other lover wants her to be alone.]
Version restaurée en 2009 par la Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin) et la George Eastman House (Rochester) aux laboratoires Haghefilm. Numérisation par la Deutsche Kinemathek. Ressortie en salles par Tamasa à l'automne 2018. [Version restored in 2009 by Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin) and George Eastman House (Rochester) at Haghefilm Laboratories. Digitization by the Deutsche Kinemathek. Released in theaters by Tamasa in autumn 2018.]

La Cinémathèque française et le Red Bull Studios Paris proposent une performance unique autour du film, dont la musique sera jouée en direct par la musicienne française Irène Dresel. [The Cinémathèque française and the Red Bull Studios Paris offer a unique performance around the film, whose music will be played live by the French musician Irène Dresel.]



Avec Loulou, Georg Wilhelm Pabst adapte L’Esprit de la terre et La Boîte de Pandore, deux pièces écrites par Frank Wedekind, toutes deux inspirées de sa rencontre douloureuse avec Lou-Andreas Salomé. De ces récits, toutefois, Pabst ne conservera qu’un souvenir lointain. Grand découvreur d’actrices (il donne, en 1925, l’un de ses premiers grands rôles à Greta Garbo dans La Rue sans joie), Pabst songe d’abord pour incarner Loulou à Marlene Dietrich, qui a déjà gagné une certaine notoriété en Allemagne. Il lui préfère finalement une actrice américaine de vingt-deux ans au jeu très physique, découverte dans Une Femme dans chaque port de Howard Hawks (1928) : Louise Brooks. [With Loulou , Georg Wilhelm Pabst adapts The Spirit of the Earth and The Pandora's Box , two pieces written by Frank Wedekind, both inspired by his painful encounter with Lou-Andreas Salomé. From these stories, however, Pabst will only keep a distant memory. Big discoverer of actresses (he gives, in 1925, one of his first great roles in Greta Garbo in Joyless Street), Pabst thinks first to embody Loulou to Marlene Dietrich, who has already gained some notoriety in Germany. He finally prefers a twenty-two-year-old American actress in the very physical game, discovered in A Girl in Every Port of Howard Hawks (1928): Louise Brooks.]

De Pabst, Brooks disait qu’il connaissait les réactions humaines comme personne. Il pouvait ainsi tourner « une scène avec peu de répétitions et de prises ». Cette faculté lui permet de façonner le jeu naturaliste et déconcertant de Loulou. Le metteur en scène et l’actrice travailleront beaucoup à partir des costumes du personnage qui jalonnent la tragédie : tenue de cabaret, déshabillés, robe de mariée, vêtements de veuve ou haillons – autant de tenues qui nourrissent le jeu de l’actrice, et marquent les étapes de la chute du personnage. [ From Pabst, Brooks said he knew human reactions as a person. He could thus shoot "a scene with few repetitions and shots". This faculty allows him to shape the naturalistic and disconcerting game of Loulou. The director and the actress will work a lot from the costumes of the character who punctuate the tragedy: cabaret outfit, stripped naked, wedding dress, widow clothes or rags - all outfits that nourish the actress's game, and mark the stages of the fall of the character. ]

Si Loulou s’offre aux hommes, elle reste insaisissable. Profondément amorale, il émane d’elle une innocence inaliénable. Elle évolue toujours libre, intacte et candide. Pourtant, Loulou est aussi un conte moral. Dans ses aspirations libertaires et son allant, la jeune femme se heurte à la société, à ses jeux de fausseté, de trahisons et d’humiliations. Loulou est le dévoilement cruel de l’abjection sociale qui dicte bien des aspects de la vie de l’héroïne : carrière, amours, mariage, justice, jeux ou prédation. [ If Loulou offers herself to men, she remains elusive. Deeply amoral, it emanates from her an inalienable innocence. She evolves always free, intact and candid. Yet, Loulouis also a moral tale. In her libertarian aspirations and her going, the young woman comes up against society, its games of falsehood, betrayal and humiliation. Loulou is the cruel disclosure of social abjection that dictates many aspects of the heroine's life: career, love, marriage, justice, games or predation. ]

Pauline de Raymond

Friday, March 9, 2018

A couple of rather odd Louise Brooks related videos found on YouTube, including a singing shirt

Here they are, a couple of rather odd Louise Brooks related videos which I recently came across on YouTube, including a singing shirt, seen below, and a quirky song, which follows. I like the song by the Tombstone Teeth well enough, but don't know what to think of the shirt short.


And there is this music video, which is odd in a different way.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Louise Brooks Society on Twitter @LB_Society

The Louise Brooks Society is on Twitter @LB_Society.

In fact, the LBS is followed by more than 4,769 individuals. Are you one of them? Sign up to get the latest news. And, be sure and check out the LBS Twitter profile and the more
than 5,370 LBS tweets so far!


Louise Brooks ✪

@LB_Society

Louise Brooks Society - all about the silent film & Jazz Age icon who played
Lulu in Pandora's Box. Visit our website, blog & online radio station!

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Toronto Silent Film Festival set for April 6 - 9

This year's annual Toronto Silent Film Festival is set to take place April 6 - 9. Further information, including the line-up of films and ticket availability, can be found HERE.

Their spotlight on Women in Film this year focuses on Producer (Asta Nielsen for Hamlet); Director (Lois Weber for Sensation Seekers); and Comedians (the criminally under seen Louise Fazenda, Alice Howell, Mabel Normand, Anita Garvin & Marion Byron).

Monday, March 5, 2018

More on Poland and film, including Louise Brooks





As a follow-up to the just concluded 4 part series of posts featuring Polish film posters of the 1920s and 1930s, and as a nod to the forthcoming Polish Film Festival in London which is about to take place (I wish I could be there), I present this Louise Brooks Society blog post from 2010 titled "Discovering a Polish Lulu."


========================================

For those interested in European film history, in silent film, and in Louise Brooks - Marek Haltof’s Polish National Cinema (Berghahn Books) offers a little something for everyone. Haltof’s 300-page survey is the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish filmmaking and film culture from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st century. It’s also a groundbreaking work well worth checking out - whatever your interst.

The book's first two chapters, “Polish Cinema before the Introduction of Sound” and “The Sound Period of the 1930s,” are each fascinating and detailed accounts of the origins and development of the Polish cinema.

Buffeted as it was between Germany and Russia and by the more dominant film industry’s found in each of those countries, Polish cinema was, naturally, influenced by its neighbors. German and Russian as well as French and American films all showed in Poland – and each left their mark. It’s known, for example, that at least a few of Louise Brooks’ American silent films as well as her German-made movies were shown in Warsaw – the capitol of both Poland and the Polish film industry.

For example, Pandora’s Box, retitled Lulu, opened at the Casino Theater in Warsaw at the end of May, 1929. It ran for a few weeks, and was well received. In my research, I have been able to track down the Polish newspaper reviews and advertisements for that historic screening.

One striking example given by Haltof of the German influence on Polish cinema is noted in the book’s second chapter, on the films of the 1930s.

Haltof writes, “The treatment of women in Polish melodramas oscillates between presenting them as femme fatales in the tradition of Pola Negri’s silent features made for the Sfinks company, and as vulnerable figures at the mercy of the environment. The former representation, which is not very popular in Polish cinema, can be seen in Zabawka (The Toy, 1933), directed by Michal Waszynski. The title refers to the female protagonist Lulu (Alma Kar), a Warsaw cabaret star, who is invited to a country manor by a wealthy landowner. The landowner’s son and local Don Juan both fall in love with Lulu and pay for it. The name of the protagonist and the theme of the film suggest G.W. Pabst’s influence (Louise Brooks as Lulu in Pandora’s Box, 1929), and this inspiration has been emphasized by one of the scriptwriters of the film.” Pictured here is Alma Kar as Lulu in Zabawka.




Haltof, a Polish-born scholar, is now resident in the United States where he teaches Film in the English Department at Northern Michigan University. Via email, he confirmed the influence of one film on the other. He also supplied a photocopy of a page from a hard-to-find Polish work, Historia filmu polskiego (1988), which he cites in his own book. It quotes coscriptwriter Andrzej Tomakowski on the influence of Pandora’s Box on Zabawka.



A viewing of Zabawka itself confirms the influence (see video clip below - the entire film resides, in parts, on YouTube). The character, played by the charming Alma Kar, is named Lulu and is like Pabst’s version of Lulu a showgirl desired by many (including a Father and his son) with disastrous results. In one early scene, this Polish Lulu is surrounded by a line of chorus girls each wearing a sharp bob haircut just like that worn by Brooks in Pandora’s Box – except each of these Polish chorines are blonde!


Marek Haltof’s Polish National Cinema was first published in 2002, and was reprinted in softcover in 2008 by Berghahn Books. It is available online and at select independent bookstores.

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Some Polish movie posters from the 1920s and 1930s, part 4

I love looking around digital databases. And if those databases are located in other countries, all the better.

Recently, I returned to Polona, a digital archive from Poland which features Polish books, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera - such as movie posters. Except for the first poster shown in the first post, a 1939 poster for When You're in Love (1937), and the last poster in the last post, a 1932 poster for Prix de beaute (1930), I didn't find any other posters related to Louise Brooks career, but I did find a number of rather attractive posters promoting American films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. (Most of the posters in this digital collection date from the 1930s, when Brooks' career was in sharp decline and her films were seldom shown in Europe.)

Interestingly, these posters are predominately typographical in design, with very few images. The best of them play with design, varying the size, color, orientation and type of font displayed. There are more than 1700 posters. Here are a few that caught my eye due to their design or the film or stars featured.

This Sonja Henie poster displays a sleek design




Daughter of Shanghai (1937)


the French actress Simone Simon can be heard on RadioLulu

Madame Sans-Gêne (1925), starring Gloria Swanson

a religious film

Elmo Lincoln was the first Tarzan; this poster promotes a later western called All Around Frying Pan (1925)

from the Jules Verne novel Michael Strogoff

Laurel and Hardy

King Vidor's The Champ (1931) starred Wallace Beery



a 1932 poster for the 1930 Louise Brooks' film Prix de beaute

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Some Polish movie posters from the 1920s and 1930s, part 3

I love looking around digital databases. And if those databases are located in other countries, all the better.

Recently, I returned to Polona, a digital archive from Poland which features Polish books, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera - such as movie posters. Except for the first poster shown in the first post, a 1939 poster for When You're in Love (1937), and the last poster in the last post, a 1932 poster for Prix de beaute (1930), I didn't find any other posters related to Louise Brooks career, but I did find a number of rather attractive posters promoting American films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. (Most of the posters in this digital collection date from the 1930s, when Brooks' career was in sharp decline and her films were seldom shown in Europe.)

Interestingly, these posters are predominately typographical, with very few images. The best of them play with design, varying the size, color, orientation and type of font displayed. There are more than 1700 posters. Here are a few that caught my eye due to their design or the film or stars featured. Tomorrow's post will feature even more posters.

Mazurka, starring the Polish born Pola Negri
Shadow of Sherlock Holmes ?

Love Me and the World Is Mine (1927)
Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
Faust, with Emil Jannings and Camilla Horn (the first silent film I ever saw on TV)
this 1927 poster says that this military cinema in Dęblin was showing a German film


with Zarah Leander, and with Boris Karloff





Friday, March 2, 2018

Some Polish movie posters from the 1920s and 1930s, part 2

I love looking around digital databases. And if those databases are located in other countries, all the better.

Recently, I returned to Polona, a digital archive from Poland which features Polish books, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera - such as movie posters. Except for the first poster shown in the first post, a 1939 poster for When You're in Love (1937), and the last poster in the last post, a 1932 poster for Prix de beaute (1930), I didn't find any other posters related to Louise Brooks career, but I did find a number of rather attractive posters promoting American films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. (Most of the posters in this digital collection date from the 1930s, when Brooks' career was in sharp decline and her films were seldom shown in Europe.)

Interestingly, these posters are predominately typographical in design, with very few images. The best of them play with design, varying the size, color, orientation and type of font displayed. There are more than 1700 posters. Here are a few that caught my eye due to their design or the film or stars featured. Tomorrow's post will feature even more posters.

King Kong, with Fay Wray (who I once had the pleasure to meet)

Monsieur Beaucaire, starring Rudolph Valentino
Monsieur Beaucaire as Mr Beaucaire
Buck Jones, in a "sensational film"

Had to include this because I'm reading the Miriam Hopkins bio by Allen Ellenberger, and loving it!

An odd pair: Heidi, with Shirley Temple, and La Grande Illusion, with Erich von Stroheim

My Man Godfrey, one of my favorite films, starring Carole Lombard and William Powell

Charlie Chaplin, in The Gold Rush

Buster Keaton, in Doughboys

Charlie Chan in Honolulu
Last of the Mochicans

an example of a dual language poster, in Polish and Yiddish

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Some Polish movie posters from the 1920s and 1930s, part 1

I love looking around digital databases. And if those databases are located in other countries, all the better.

Recently, I returned to Polona, a digital archive from Poland which features Polish books, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera - such as movie posters. Except for the first poster shown in the first post, a 1939 poster for When You're in Love (1937), and the last poster in the last post, a 1932 poster for Prix de beaute (1930), I didn't find any other posters related to Louise Brooks career, but I did find a number of rather attractive posters promoting American films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. (Most of the posters in this digital collection date from the 1930s, when Brooks' career was in sharp decline and her films were seldom shown in Europe.)

Interestingly, these posters are predominately typographical in design, with very few images. The best of them play with design, varying the size, color, orientation and type of font displayed. There are more than 1700 posters. Here are a few that caught my eye due to their design or the film or stars featured. Tomorrow's post will feature even more posters.

Louise Brooks had an uncredited part in When You're in Love
   


with Pandora's Box star Fritz Kortner!

a nice example of shaped text

an example of colored text





that's Bette Davis in Jezebel
and that's Renée Adorée, I think. But I can't figure out the title of the film
with Anna May Wong
Not a movie poster: "The Capital Labor Election Committee convenes on Sunday, October 26, at 11 am
in the 'Pola Negri Palace' cinema hall Pl. Theatrical pre-election meeting"

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