Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Berkeley Daily Planet article

An article on the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet. The festival is screening Pandora's Box, and thus the article mentions the film and pictures Louise Brooks. Unfortunately, the article repeats the suggestions that Louise Brooks is largely remembered today because she slept with the right film historians - a rather stupid spin on the notion of the casting couch.
Saturday night will see a screening of Pandora’s Box, a German film directed by G.W. Pabst and starring the iconic American actress Louise Brooks. Brooks was not a great success in American films and she eventually made her way to Germany where she made three films in an effort to resuscitate her career. It is those films upon which her reputation rests today. Returning to America, she found herself blacklisted and never again had much success.
But later her talent for self-promotion, including at least one romantic relationship with a film historian, led to rekindled interest in her career and helped to retroactively establish Brooks as a great and important figure of the silent era. Her credentials as a great actress may be debatable, but her charisma, beauty and sexual appeal are undeniable, and Pandora’s Box presents her in her signature role as a seductive and dangerous woman who brings ruin to those she encounters.
I would suggest that the author was only repeating things he read elsewhere.

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