Monday, April 10, 2006

Prix de Beauté

From the April 18th Village Voice article on the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival - "Best in Show: The Top 40 Picks of the Tribeca Film Festival" by J. Hoberman.

Prix de Beauté
In her final starring role, Louise Brooks plays a Parisian typist who wins a beauty contest and dumps her boyfriend, with tragic consequences. Augusto Genina's direction is routine, but this is a cinematographer's movie, from the dazzling location shooting to the beautifully lit projection room climax. Cameraman Rudolph Mates does wonders with Brooks's radiant face—her performance is an irresistible mix of innocence and eroticism. The film began shooting as a silent, sound was added, and it was released in four languages. The rarely revived silent version will be shown, preceded by Giovanni Pastrone's The Fall of Troy, an important film in the history of set design—the magnificent decors often give a sense of bound- less space in contrast to the one-dimensional sets of earlier historical pictures. E.S.

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