Louise Brooks Retrospective at La cinémathèque française

La cinémathèque française in Paris is mounting a major retrospective of the films of Louise Brooks which is set to take place later this month, from September 17 through September 24. The 10 program series will feature 9 of the actress's feature films, along with a 10th program featuring the surviving fragments from three of Brooks' other films. There is, as well, a 60 minute discussion about Brooks with Professor Marion Polirsztok, moderated by Marién Gómez of the Cinémathèque française. More about this event, including times, venues, and ticket availability, can be found HERE.

Notably, this is the first retrospective of Brooks' films since the recent preservation of four of the actress' surviving / fragmentary films, each of which was included on the 2026 release Focus on Louise Brooks, from Flicker Alley. AND, for at least a couple three of these films, it will mark their first showing in Paris in 99 or 100 years!

The brief introductory statement says, in translation, "One of the legendary figures of 1920s cinema, celebrated as much for her modern acting style as for her scandalous aura—the ultimate embodiment of the freedom and avant-garde spirit of the Roaring Twenties. Once a Hollywood queen and a shooting star of European cinema (*Diary of a Lost Girl*, *Pandora's Box*), she reinvented herself as a writer before fading into obscurity on the eve of World War II—until Henri Langlois resurrected the fallen star in 1955, opening his tribute at the Cinémathèque Française with the definitive declaration: 'There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich: there is only Louise Brooks!'"

Appropriately, the retrospective's overture screening is the restored sound version of Prix de beauté. (Too bad they are not showing the silent version as well, as a coda.) The retrospective concludes with a three film program of the aforementioned three film fragments from Focus on Louise Brooks. Otherwise, here is the schedule of films: the descriptive text comes from the La cinémathèque française website, and is given in English translation.

September 17

Prix de beauté
Augusto Genina 
France / 1930 / 99 min / DCP / Restored version 
With Louise Brooks, Georges Charlia, Henri Bandini. A young typist wins a beauty contest that sparks jealousy and desire. Originally written by René Clair and directed by Augusto Genina, *Prix de beauté* bears the fascinating traces of the transition from silent to sound film, blending silence, voices, and a sense of melancholic modernity.
 

"She represents the intelligence of screen acting; she is the perfect embodiment of photogenie; she alone encapsulates everything the cinema of the late silent era sought: extreme naturalness and extreme simplicity. Her art is so pure that it becomes invisible." (Henri Langlois)

September 18

It's the Old Army Game
A. Edward Sutherland
USA / 1926 / 70 min / 35mm unique print / French intertitles
Based on the play *The Comic Supplement* by J. P. McEvoy and W. C. Fields.

With W. C. Fields, Louise Brooks, Blanche Ring. 
Musical accompaniment by Arno Dedeycker.

 

A pharmacist sees his daily life descend into chaos as he deals with a parade of intrusive customers and passing con artists. Drawing on W. C. Fields’s vaudeville routines, the film offers a mischievous tale filled with gags and absurd situations, all illuminated by the singular presence of Louise Brooks. A slapstick whirlwind that is as chaotic as it is delightful.

 

The Street of Forgotten Men

Herbert Brenon

USA / 1925 / 75 min / DCP / French intertitles

With Percy Marmont, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton.

 

In the Bowery, a con man lives by his wits and pretenses—until a young woman he has protected finds herself in danger. Herbert Brenon grounds his story in an urban setting rich in colorful detail and, amidst the deceptions, sketches a path toward possible redemption. It also marks the debut of Louise Brooks as a spirited companion.

 

September 19

A Girl in Every Port
Howard Hawks
USA / 1928 / 77 min / 35mm / French intertitles
With Victor McLaglen, Robert Armstrong, Louise Brooks.
Musical accompaniment by Medhi Telhaoui

Working from a screenplay he wrote himself, Howard Hawks directs Robert Armstrong and Victor McLaglen in a comedy about male friendship strained by the opposite sex. Underlying the story is the ambiguous relationship between two men—a theme Hawks would revisit repeatedly throughout his career. Opposite them—and calling the shots for a time—is Louise Brooks, on loan from Paramount for the occasion. Hawks chose this "pretty, rebellious girl" for her looks and determination. She brings an avant-garde edge to the film, and her role as a "bad girl" caught the eye of Pabst, who saw in her his future *Lulu*. *A Girl in Every Port* is "conceived in the present yet identifies with the past," notes Henri Langlois. It is a melodrama tinged with humor—resolutely modern and, for Hawks, seminal. Also known by the title *Poings de fer, cœur d'or* (Iron Fists, Heart of Gold). 

Discussion with Marion Polirsztok
Moderated by Marién Gómez 60 min
It is generally understood that Louise Brooks’s life and career were profoundly shaped by the two German films she made with Pabst. "In Berlin," she wrote, "I became an actress." But what was she in Hollywood? An "anti-star," as the 1977 book dedicated to her suggests? Revisiting *A Girl in Every Port* offers a chance to rediscover Louise *before* Lulu—to see the image, the roles, and the femininity she embodied within the American film industry of the late 1920s. —  Marion Polirsztok Marion Polirsztok is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Rennes 2 University. Marién Gómez is a Cultural Activities Coordinator at the Cinémathèque française.

Beggars of Life
William A. Wellman
USA / 1928 / 82 min / DCP / French intertitles / Restored version
Based on the novel *Apache Rising* by Julian Johnson. *Beggars of Life* by Jim Tully.
Starring Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, Louise Brooks.
Screening presented by Marion Polirsztok. Musical accompaniment by Kolia Chabanier

After killing her attacker, an orphan girl hits the road across the Midwest with a charming drifter. They become entangled with a band of stowaways led by the fearsome Oklahoma Red. Adapted from the novel by Jim Tully—a literary classic chronicling the hobos who secretly rode freight trains—this is a raw, realistic slice-of-life portrait of the vagrants of the 1890s recession. Beyond Wellman’s masterful direction, the film—released a year before the 1929 crash—derives its power from its cast (featuring real-life drifters) and a deeply moving Louise Brooks in one of her finest roles.

Loulou / Die Büchse der Pandora
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Germany / 1929 / 134 min / DCP / French intertitles / Restored version
Based on the plays *Pandora's Box* (*Die Büchse der Pandora*) and *Earth Spirit* (*Erdgeist*) by Frank Wedekind.
With Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Carl Goetz.

Refusing to bow to the social conventions that seek to confine her, Lulu moves through various social circles and desires, living for passion and pleasure. Drawing on Frank Wedekind’s plays, Pabst crafts a lucid tragedy—a dance of love and death—that exposes the hypocrisies of a society obsessed with controlling the body. A blend of innocence and sensuality, Louise Brooks’s modern performance—with her bobbed hair and intense gaze—elevates a masterpiece of latent eroticism, where fascination and destruction go hand in hand, cementing the birth of an enduring cinematic icon.

"No one captured the feverish atmosphere backstage on the opening night of a grand revue quite like Pabst: the dizzying haste, the seemingly aimless coming and going, the press of bodies as sets are shifted about, the stage seeming to tilt askew during the acts, the entrances and exits, the performers’ eagerness to take their bows amidst the applause, the rivalry, the camaraderie, and the humor—that bewildering mix of prop men and electricians at work, artistic aspiration, colorful spectacle, and easy sensuality. A dazzling display, a heated atmosphere, and sensuality awash in waves of light—shimmering on lamé curtains, gleaming on helmets and armor, and casting a pearly glow over the bodies of near-naked women." "Everything wavers in the hazy background where Loulou appears as a kind of pagan idol—alluring, glittering with sequins, feathers, frills, and furbelows." (Lotte Eisner)

September 20

Le Journal d'une fille perdue / Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Germany / 1929 / 95 min / DCP / French intertitles / Restored version
Based on the novel *Tagebuch einer Verlorenen* by Margarete Böhme.
With Louise Brooks, Sybille Schmitz, Edith Meinhard.
Screening introduced by Florence Tissot

Cast out by her family, seduced and then rejected, a young woman endures the brutality of institutions, moving from a boarding school to a brothel. Louise Brooks’s elusive gaze haunts this indictment of the moral order, elevated by Pabst’s poetic realism. A hymn to forgiveness and generosity.

"Louise Brooks represents the intelligence of screen acting; she is the perfect embodiment of photogenie. She alone encapsulates everything the cinema of the late silent era sought: extreme naturalness and extreme simplicity. Without her, Pabst could never have achieved universality; he could never have attained that direct, stripped-down, objective style; he could never have gone so far, handling such risqué subjects with such elegance—that way of saying everything, analyzing everything, without seeming to touch it." (Henri Langlois)

The Canary Murder Case
Malcolm St. Clair, Frank Tuttle
USA / 1929 / 82 min / 35mm (unique print) / Original version with French subtitles
Based on the novel *The Canary Murder Case* by S. S. Van Dine.
Starring William Powell, James Hall, Louise Brooks.

A cabaret singer—a past master at the art of blackmail—is found dead. Surrounding her is a gallery of compromised men, all suspects and all manipulated. A product of the Pre-Code era, *The Canary Murder Case* plunges into a world of mercenary seduction and deceptive appearances, where scandal is the common currency. A poisonous mystery and a scathing portrait of the nightlife scene.

September 24

The Show Off 
Malcolm St. Clair
USA / 1926 / 75 min / 35mm unique print / French intertitles
With Ford Sterling, Lois Wilson, Louise Brooks.

An inveterate braggart insinuates himself into a respectable family, making promises he cannot possibly keep. Ford Sterling delivers a performance of unbridled bluster, mirroring a social veneer cracked by constant lying and chatter. It is a biting comedy that turns absurdity into a driving force and the loudmouth into a true agent of chaos.

The American Venus
Frank Tuttle
USA / 1925 / 8 min / DCP / French intertitles / Restored version
With Esther Ralston, Lawrence Gray, Louise Brooks.

Beauty pageants, advertising, and dreams of stardom provide the backdrop for a comedy set in the heart of 1920s America. Through the already captivating figure of Louise Brooks in her first major role, Tuttle captures the emergence of a form of femininity that is exposed and mediated—featuring actual footage from the Miss America pageant—and held captive by a spectacle that shapes bodies and images. 

Now We're in the Air
Frank R. Strayer
USA / 1927 / 23 min / DCP / French intertitles / Restored version
Starring Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery, and Raymond Hatton.

Amidst espionage and cases of mistaken identity, two bumbling aviators find themselves swept up in the war. Driven by the comic duo of Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, this third installment in a series of military comedies favors slapstick and adventure. Louise Brooks plays mischievous twins, bringing charm and levity to a fast-paced, whimsical film punctuated by spectacular aerial sequences borrowed from William Wellman’s *Wings*.

Just Another Blonde
Alfred Santell
USA / 1926 / 32 min / French intertitles / Restored version
Starring Dorothy Mackaill, Jack Mulhall, Louise Brooks.

A New York player must woo the woman he loves on behalf of his best friend. At Coney Island, charm is a weapon, promises are traded like chips, and hearts fall faster than illusions. Shot on location, *Just Another Blonde* turns the pursuit of success into a lively, cheeky game of deception where everyone tries their luck—even if it means cheating a little. 

Be sure and check out the adjunct pages linked to from the main retrospective page, including the letter from Louise Brooks to Henri Langlois, and Élodie Tamayo's essay, "The Art of Punctuation," which begins with the brilliant opening line, "What if Louise Brooks were a punctuation mark?"

Find out more about four of the films in this historic retrospective by checking out one or more of these publications from Thomas Gladysz and the Louise Brooks Society, all of which are available from amazon France.

Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, by Thomas Gladysz (with a foreword by William Wellman Jr.) 

Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once "Lost" Film, by Thomas Gladysz (with a foreword by Robert Byrne)

The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond, by Thomas Gladysz (with forewords by Robert Byrne & Kevin Brownlow)

Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star, by Thomas Gladysz

The Diary of a Lost Girl (Louise Brooks edition), by Margarete Bohme (edited & with an introduction by Thomas Gladysz)

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2026. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. 

Searching for the Louise Brooks Holy Grail

"There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."

Henri Langlois' now famous declaration marked the beginning of the rediscovery of Louise Brooks. The year was 1955, and Langlois, the director of the Cinémathèque Française, had organized an exhibit, "60 Ans de Cinema," marking the 60 years of motion pictures. It was an historic exhibit.

Outside the exhibit building, according to various accounts, visitors were greeted by two large portraits looming over its entrance. One was of Falconetti in Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc (1927). The other was of Louise Brooks in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). [George Eastman House film curator James Card, who attended the exhibit, stated it was an image of Brooks from Pandora's Box, not Diary of a Lost Girl.] 

Such a prominent display of the two actresses baffled some. It also led a journalist to ask why an image of someone like Brooks, who was then little known, was featured. Why not another celebrated actress like Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. Langlois' strident answer, "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks" was a ringing declaration that became a rallying cry that changed film history.

I have always wanted to see a picture of the exhibit building, and of the two large banners. BUT, I have never come across one. Despite the fame of the exhibit -- as well as Langlois' now legendary proclamation, I have yet to find a picture of the event. Does anyone know if a picture even exists? One would think someone would have taken a picture of the building. And, one would think, because of its significance, such a photograph would have been reproduced in a book. I've looked, and looked. 

The closest I've ever come to "60 Ans de Cinema" is the catalogue which accompanied the exhibit. It is a rare thing, which few libraries have in their collections and even fewer second hand bookstores have for sale.

I was thrilled to acquire a copy, and to search it for any and all mentions of Louise Brooks. In conjunction with the exhibit, a number of early classic films were shown, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Abel Gance's Napoleon, Chaplin's The Circus, Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Pabst's Joyless Street, and Harold Lloyd's Safety Last. Also scheduled were Dreyer's The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc, and Pabst's Le Journal D'Une Fille Perdue. (Notably, Pandora's Box was not screened -- despite the reported image of Brooks as Lulu hanging at the entrance.)

Here is the entry Le Journal D'Une Fille Perdue, or The Diary of a Lost Girl. No author is given for the catalogue entry on The Diary of a Lost Girl, but given its rapturous tone, it was likely Langlois. The Brooks' film, whose release date is mistakenly given as 1928, was shown on August 6 at 9 pm. The catalogue entry reads. My Google assisted translation can be found on my new Louise Brooks Society webpage detailing the friendship between Louise Brooks and Henri Langlois.

Brooks and Langlois encountered one another some four times over the next few years, twice in Paris, and twice in Rochester. Like the absent picture of the "60 Ans de Cinema" building, I have never come across a photograph of Brooks and Langlois. 

In preparing my LBS page, I came across photographs of a number of the other film world personalities meeting Langlois, such as Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurasowa -- bot none with Brooks. As with the exhibit building with the two large banners, I wonder if a picture exists of the silent star and the film preservationist.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Henri Langlois Centennial Tribute includes Louise Brooks

Henri Langlois, one of the founders of the La Cinémathèque française, famously said Louise Brooks, "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."

Fittingly, a Henri Langlois centennial tribute at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California includes a Louise Brooks film. On Saturday, July 11, 2015 the PFA will screening the La Cinémathèque française's copy of Prix de beauté (1930), starring Louise Brooks. More about that particular screening can be found HERE. The line-up for the centennial tribute follows.

The French film archivist and cinephile Henri Langlois (1914–1977) is a heroic and colorful figure in the history of cinema. As the cofounder of La Cinémathèque française in Paris and as a champion of film culture, he inspired the international cinematheque movement. Indeed, Langlois’s visits to Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s greatly informed the vision of the Pacific Film Archive, particularly the way our institution exhibits, collects, and makes information about film history available to the public. Today, BAM/PFA’s film department remains true to that original model inspired by Henri Langlois, over forty years ago.

Summer 2015 brings a period of change for our film programs at BAM/PFA. This is our final season in the temporary PFA Theater, which we have occupied since 2000. What could be a more fitting tribute at this time of transition than this series, which celebrates aesthetic achievements in cinema, featuring many films that Langlois helped save for future generations of viewers? This eclectic series presents works that contributed to the development of French silent cinema as well as some by Langlois’s favorite auteurs (Tod Browning, Ernst Lubitsch, Jean Renoir, Erich von Stroheim). Langlois advocated for a cinema that explores the aesthetic possibility of film language and the use of cinema as a means of resistance, principles that we continue to champion as we move ahead into our future.

Susan Oxtoby, Senior Film Curator

Thursday, June 11, 2015
7:30 p.m. Henri Langlois Centennial Tribute: Opening Program
Introduced by Tom Luddy. Judith Rosenberg on piano. A collection of shorts on the legendary Langlois, as well as the 1918 Italian short La Tosca, a lost film found by Langlois in the BAM/PFA Collection. Titles include Langlois (1970), Chit Chat with Henri Langlois (1975), and La Cinémathèque française (1962). (94 mins)

Friday, June 12, 2015
7:00 p.m. Dimitri Kirsanoff & Nadia Sibirskaïa Collaborations
Dmitri Kirsanoff (France, 1924/1928). Imported Prints! Judith Rosenberg on piano. Two rare works from the great silent-era director Dimitri Kirsanoff: the evocative portrait of two young sisters, Ménilmontant, and Autumn Mists, a short about a melancholy soul. (54 mins)

Saturday, June 13, 2015
6:30 p.m. Forbidden Paradise
Ernst Lubitsch (US, 1924). Imported Print! Judith Rosenberg on piano. Lubitsch teams with his favorite muse, the great actress Pola Negri, for this comedy inspired by the amorous intrigue surrounding Catherine the Great of Russia. Adolphe Menjou costars. (78 mins)

Wednesday, June 17, 2015
7:30 p.m. Lumière d'été
Jean Grémillon (France, 1943). Imported Print! A remote mountain inn is the setting for a class-crossed love affair split between working class and idle rich. Coscripted by Jacques Prévert, it is acclaimed as one of the greatest French films made during the German Occupation. Followed by excerpts from Parlons cinema—à propos du cinéma dans la résistance. (120 mins)

Friday, June 19, 2015
7:00 p.m. The Steel Beast
Willy Otto Zielke (Germany, 1935). Imported Print! Commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of a rail line in 1935, this film by great German photographer Willy Otto Zielke is a daring collage of abstractions, rhythms, and historical commentary, and was immediately banned by the Nazis. (75 mins)

Friday, June 26, 2015
7:00 p.m. Early Films by Abel Gance
Abel Gance (France, 1915/1916). 35mm Restored Prints! Judith Rosenberg on piano. Two early and rare shorts, The Madness of Doctor Tube and The Deadly Gases, that demonstrate the fledgling skills of the director who would later make one of the silent era’s greatest epics, Napoleon. (83 mins)

Friday, July 3, 2015
7:00 p.m. The Unknown
Tod Browning (US, 1927). Judith Rosenberg on piano. A circus performer has his arms amputated to satisfy his lover’s strange desires in Tod Browning’s shocking tale of madness and love, starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford. (66 mins)

Wednesday, July 8, 2015
7:30 p.m. Nana
Jean Renoir (France, 1926). Imported Print! Judith Rosenberg on piano. An actress turns courtesan to make ends meet during Europe’s decadent Second Empire in Renoir’s first full-length vehicle for his wife, Catherine Hessling. Renoir: “My first film worth talking about.” (150 mins)

Saturday, July 11, 2015
6:30 p.m. Prix de beauté
Augusto Genina (France, 1930). Imported Print! Judith Rosenberg on piano. The last major role for silent-era beauty Louise Brooks (Pandora’s Box) was as a Parisian typist who wins a beauty contest and a movie contract, only to face the violent disapproval of her husband. (108 mins)

Saturday, July 18, 2015
6:30 p.m. La chienne
Jean Renoir (France, 1931). Imported Print! Michel Simon is an unhappily married middle-aged bank clerk whose only passion in life is painting, until he becomes obsessed with a prostitute. Remade by Fritz Lang as Scarlet Street, Renoir’s original is infused with a sadomasochistic sexuality that is both heightened and tempered by Renoir's camera. (100 mins)

Wednesday, July 22, 2015
7:30 p.m. Foolish Wives
Erich von Stroheim (US, 1922) Judith Rosenberg on piano. Monte Carlo provides the suitably decadent setting for von Stroheim’s look at money, temptation, and marriage. “Never was a film more revolutionary” (Langlois). (108 mins)

Friday, July 24, 2015
8:50 p.m. Queen Kelly
Erich von Stroheim (US, 1931) In a debauched Central European kingdom, a mad queen must wed a notorious libertine, who instead falls for a young nun (Gloria Swanson). One of the most infamous unfinished film maudits in history, and praised as Erich von Stroheim’s masterpiece. (74 mins)

Sunday, July 26, 2015
5:00 p.m. Georges Méliès Shorts
Georges Méliès (France, 1897–1906). Digital Restorations! Judith Rosenberg on piano. The genius shorts of the father of cinema, many hand-painted and restored by La Cinémathèque française in 2013 with the Éclair Group. (58 mins)


Based on Grâce à Henri Langlois, a touring exhibition originated by La Cinémathèque française (Paris), curated by Samantha Leroy. Our deepest thanks to Director General Serge Toubiana and the staff of La Cinémathèque française, who have made available many archival prints and digital restorations for this centennial tribute. BAM/PFA also wishes to thank the French Cultural Services San Francisco, Les Films du Jeudi, SNC, and Kathy Brew.

Henri Langlois gravesite

Yesterday, I received a fascinating email about the gravesite of Henri Langlois, the famous French film archivist and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française.As most any fan of Louise Brooks knows, Langlois was an admirer of the actress. He uttered the now famous declaration, "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."

Brooks' fan Steve Robinson emailed me a couple of images he took in the cemetery in Montparnasse where Langlois is buried. He wanted me to share them with everyone. The first image is of the gravesite, and the second is of a collage on the gravestone which includes an image of Louise Brooks from Pandora's Box. Thank you Steve.