I have been researching Louise Brooks for a long time, ever since I began the Louise Brooks Society and launched its website back in 1995. Over those 25 years, I have come across all kinds of interesting, unusual, and even surprising material. However, what I came across a few days ago left me a bit
gobsmacked.
I found two articles focusing on
Pandora's Box, the 1929 German-made, G.W. Pabst directed film starring Louise Brooks. It wasn't so much that I found two articles that were unknown to me - but
where I found them. They appeared in the June 1930 issue of
O Fan - the official newsletter of the Chaplin-Club. (More on this remarkable group below.) What astonished me was that something like a local film club printed a newsletter back then, and that ephemeral copies survived to this day. And what's more, this group was based not in the United States or Europe, but in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Here is the table of contents for the June 1930 issue, with
Pandora's Box referred to under its Portuguese title,
A Caixa de Pandora.
As can be seen above, one article on the film is by
Octávio de Faria, and the other is by Annibal Nogueira Jr. Each were noted Brazilian writers. (Additionally, Octavio de Faria was the editor of
O Fan.) The first article runs seven and a half-pages. It is subtitled -- "ensaaio para um estudo sobre G. W. Pabst" -- or "essay for a study on G. W. Pabst." Instead of posting images of each page of this first piece, I will instead
LINK TO THE ARTICLE so that those who wish to read it may do so.
The second article runs seven pages. Instead of posting images of each page of this second article, I will instead
LINK TO THE ARTICLE so those who wish to read it may do so.
The last entry on the table of contents pictured above is "Sessões do Chaplin-Club," a record of the group's sessions or meetings at which they viewed and/or discussed films. Did the Chaplin-Club have their own access to prints of the films they wrote about, or did they rely on theatrical screenings? It is hard to say. But, in announcing the publication of the two articles shown above, the prior issue of
O Fan referred to a "special presentation" they had of
A Caixa de Pandora.
If that is the case, WOW. If not, then the only public showing of
A Caixa de Pandora in Rio de Janeiro prior to June 1930 that I have come across took place in December, 1929 at Rio's Primor theatre, pictured below in an image dating from the 1920s.
This old theater may still stand. James N. Green's a 2001 book,
Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago Press), refers to the Primor as "a large old movie theatre in downtown Rio... [and] a popular place for anonymous sexual liaisons."
But ... I digress. As well as the two articles, the sessões record in the June 1930 issue of O Fan contains a brief evaluation of A Caixa de Pandora by an author credited only as "A.C." (That author may be Almir Castro.)
My rough, computer assisted translation from the Portuguese reads:
"A major film by Pabst. It is a drama begun in dark tones, charged, morbid. Typically Pabst, it's deeply imbued with his directorial temperament. They are five or six different and equally tragic scenes, which evolve around a young woman, leading to a progressive and almost unconscious fall.
Scenario is well built, few inter-titles, drawing from the artist everything he can give. Symbolism. Great staging, great ambience, great characters, great detail, great sensuality - obsessive sensuality. All of it is compressed, dense, compact ...
Pandora's Box ... and Louise Brooks."
Notably, this issue also contained a still from the film, which I have improved via Photoshop because the original scan was poor.
What was Chaplin-Club? Founded in 1928 by Octavio de Faria and three others, the Chaplin-Club was the first cine-club in Brazil; it's main objective was to study cinema as art rather than as a popular form of entertainment. It should be noted that though they revered Charlie Chaplin and took their name from the actor, the club's interests went beyond the comedian and his films. And, it should also be noted, the club's perspective looked beyond Hollywood and instead looked to ideas about film then percolating in Europe, especially in France and to a lesser degree the Soviet Union.
Since the group's founding, it issued
O Fan as a means to spread its ideas. The group's newsletter, which ran between 1928 and 1930, marked the beginning of "serious" Brazilian film criticism. All together, I believe, there were nine issues. The first seven issues, which resemble a professional newsletter of today, ran between four and eight pages, while the last two, which looked like a less professional 'zine, ran approximately 100 pages. Check out the first issue (pictured below) as well as later issues of the publication starting
HERE.
Unlike
Cinearte, Brazil's leading film-fan magazine,
O Fan had no advertisements, printed few photographs, and seemingly had little interest in Hollywood and its stars. It newsletter was instead filled with serious, sometimes technical analyses of European and American silent films. It printed articles on directors such as Abel Gance, Erich von Stroheim, King Vidor, Buster Keaton, E. A. Dupont, D. W. Griffith, F. W. Murnau and G. W. Pabst. Below is a typical first page, featuring articles on Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch. Other earlier issues critiqued films like
City Lights,
Fazil,
Sunrise,
The Patriot,
Moulin Rouge, and
Broadway Melody. There were also short write-ups of
Erotikon,
Variety,
Piccadilly and other films.
Even with the emergence of sound films, the Chaplin-Club considered silent film the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. According to Maite Conde's 2018 book
Foundational Films: Early Cinema and Modernity in Brazil (University of California Press), the Brazilian group, "decried the talkies as attacking the purity of film's visual discourse, and, worse still, as taking the medium back to its popular origins in the theater....
O Fan knew that it was read by almost no one and that it had no influence in the future of film, but it was not troubled by this."
What film could achieve was an idea whose time had come. Just a couple of months after the two articles about
Pandora's Box appeared in
O Fan, another of Brooks' European films, the French made
Prix de beaute (aka
Miss Europa) opened in Rio at the Alhambra, where it proved to be a big hit. That film was Brooks' first sound film, but more than that, it is a film very much concerned with the visual depiction of sound.
Despite their belief that their group had little influence, the ideas
put forth by the Chaplin-Club seeped into Brazil's film culture. The Chaplin-Club dissolved in 1930, and its members went on to be film critics, writers, and teachers whose followers and students would in turn go on to form their own film clubs, societies, and groups. In the 1940s, when Orson Welles visited
Brazil, he met with members of the disbanded Chaplin-Club and
even debated the use of sound and image in film. In the mid-1950s, important national institutions like the Brazilian Cinemateca, and later the Cinemateca of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, were founded. Both, in part, can trace their origins to the intellectual cinephilia seeded by the Chaplin-Club.
Interestingly, as well, in 1959, Enrique Scheiby, assistant curator of the Brazilian Cinemateca, visited the United States under the
State Department's international educational exchange service. He visited for five months, to "study the American film industry." According to an August, 1959 article in a Brazilian newspaper,
Correio do Parana, among the various places he visited was the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York -- and among the prominent stars he came into contact with were George Cukor, Otto Preminger, Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson and .... Louise Brooks. (My research confirms that Scheiby dined with Brooks and James Card on May 14, 1959.) According to Carlos Roberto de Souza's
A Cinemateca Brasileira e a preservação de filmes no Brasil, Scheiby was intent on meeting Brooks, "muse of silent cinema, who signed photographs for the select members of an informal club of Louise Brooks admirers, whose headquarters was the Cinematheque." For a time, one of those autographed photographs would hang in the meeting room of the Cinematheque.
Three years later, French film archivist Henri Langlois also visited Rochester, and was interviewed by Henry Clune of the
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. He confirmed Brazil's continuing affection for Brooks.
Some of the above material will be included in my forthcoming two volume work,
Around the World with Louise Brooks, a transnational look at the career and films of the actress. It is due out later this year. For more interesting, unusual, and even surprising material, stay tuned to this blog. And consider subscribing. The next post will feature material of interest to those interested in early film and it manifestation around the globe.
.jpg)
