Now We're in the Air, starring Louise Brooks, to screen at NY Museum of Modern Art

Now We're in the Air, the once lost comedy starring Louise Brooks, is set to screen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on January 19 as part of "To Save and Project: The 15th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation."

Now We're in the Air (1927) will be shown along with The World and the Woman (1916), starring Jeanne Eagels. The two films will be introduced by screenwriter and film historian David Stenn, and will feature live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin. More information can be found HERE.

The MoMA page reads:


Now We’re in the Air (excerpt). 1927. USA. Directed by Frank R. Strayer. Screenplay by Thomas J. Geraghty. With Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks. 35mm. 23 min.
Louise Brooks makes a brief but memorable appearance as a carnival performer in this newly discovered fragment of a World War I aviation comedy. Restored by The Library of Congress in collaboration with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.


The World and the Woman. 1916. USA. Directed by Eugene Moore. Screenplay by Philip Longeran, William C. de Mille. With Jeanne Eagels, Boyd Marshall, Thomas A. Curran. 35mm. 74 min.
Broadway legend Jeanne Eagels stars as a prostitute who discovers she has faith-healing gifts in a rare silent feature from the New York–based Thanhouser Film Corp. Restored by the George Eastman Museum.

A write-up of the series in Film Journal International stated "David Stenn introduces a fragment of Now We're in the Air (Jan. 19), a 1927 service comedy starring future superstar Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton as two sad sacks who end up in an aerial unit during World War I. Some 20 minutes of footage were recovered from a deteriorated nitrate print found in a Czech archive. It's mostly excruciatingly broad comedy of the Dumb and Dumber school, but it does offer a few minutes of young circus performer Louise Brooks in a black tutu."

Those who attend this special screening will be interested to know that I have just recently authored a book on the Brooks' film. I also helped with the preservation of this once-lost work, and wrote this illustrated book detailing the history of the movie and its discovery in Prague by film preservationist Robert Byrne; also considered in the book is the surprising impact this otherwise little known film has had on Brooks’ life and career.


And amazon.com review said this about the book: “The absolute final word on the film from the world’s foremost expert on Louise Brooks. Thoroughly researched and expertly written, oh, and did I mention lavishly illustrated? If you love silent film and if you love Louise Brooks (and who doesn’t) you really should pick up a copy for your library.” 

The book is available at  amazon.com // Barnes & Noble // Indiebound // Powells

A little something about the new Louise Brooks book on Now We're in the Air (1927)

As a few of you may know, I've recently written a new book on the Louise Brooks film Now We're in the Air. Here are links to the book on various sites, which I might suggest, would make the perfect gift for the silent film buff friend or Louise Brooks devotee:

 amazon.com // Barnes & Noble // Indiebound // Powells // ABEbooks // Alibris

This companion to the once "considered lost" 1927 Louise Brooks' film, Now We’re in the Air, tells the story of the film’s making, its reception, and its discovery by film preservationist Robert Byrne. Also considered is the surprising impact this otherwise little known film has had on Brooks’ life and career. With two rare fictionalizations of the movie story, more than 75 little seen images, detailed credits, trivia, and a foreword by Robert Byrne, the scholar who found the film in Prague, the Czech Republic.

On December 3, 2017, the curiously named Monsieur Chelaine (a personage not known to me) gave the book it's first amazon review, calling my book "The absolute final word on the film from the world's foremost expert on Louise Brooks. Thoroughly researched and expertly written, oh, and did I mention lavishly illustrated? If you love silent film and if you love Louise Brooks (and who doesn't) you really should pick up a copy for your library."

And that's not all. Earlier, a fine fellow named Paul Joyce posted this tweet praising the book. ithankyou Paul.

Now We're in the Air is chock-full of images, including a number that even the most devoted Louise Brooks fan will not have seen, including this rare photo of Brooks' name in lights above a Prague theater in 1929, around the same time that Now We're in the Air was showing in the Czech capitol! (Why Brooks' name was in lights is explained in the book.)

I had a lot of fun writing and compiling this 130 page book. I wanted to thank all those who helped, and did so in my acknowledgements, which I shaped into an airplane.

Now We're in the Air set to show in Pordenone, Italy

Now We're in the Air (1927) will be shown in Italy at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. In what is being billed as its international premiere, the fragmentary, 23 minute, once-lost film will be shown on Monday, October 2 as part of the series "Rediscoveries and Restorations."

Learn more about the film and its rediscovery HERE.

8:30 pm - Rediscoveries and Restorations
NOW WE’RE IN THE AIR (US 1927; fragment 23’) | International Premiere
by Frank R. Strayer with Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton
Pianoforte: John Sweeney

Thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and to the Prague Cinematheque, where the film fragment was rediscovered by Robert Byrne in 2016, Louise Brooks comes back to us in all her stunning beauty. Even though for a few minutes only, we shall see her move in that same black tutu in which she was captured, gorgeous yet still, in the famous portraits by Eugene Robert Richee.

 
Earlier, the festival posted this: 

The 36th Pordenone Silent Film Festival will host the international premiere of the recently rediscovered 22 minutes of the long missing comedy Now We’re in the Air (US 1927), featuring Louise Brooks.

In the film, set in World War I, Brooks plays twins, one raised in France, the other one in Germany. The surviving footage includes only scenes with the actress in the role of the French twin, wearing the same black tutu she wears in the famous portraits by Eugene Robert Richee.

The fragment was rediscovered in 2016 at the Národní filmový archiv, Prague, by Rob Byrne, film historian and president of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The restoration was completed in 2017 as a partnership between San Francisco SFF and the Czech archive.

Until now, all four films Brooks made in 1927 have been considered lost.

Now We're in the Air screens tonight at Library of Congress

Now We're in the Air will be shown tonight at the Library of Congress Packard Campus (19053 Mt Pony Rd., Culpeper, Virginia). Here are at few more details on this late breaking event.

Now We're in the Air & Corporal Kate, tonight @ 7:30

NOW WE’RE IN THE AIR (Paramount, 1927) Louise Brooks appeared in 14 American films during the silent era. Five of these features are currently thought to be entirely lost, while two others survive only as fragments or incomplete copies. Following a tip from Academy Award winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, Robert Byrne learned of a fragmentary nitrate print of the hitherto considered lost “Now We’re in the Air” (1927) stored in the vaults of Národní filmový archiv in Prague. In this presentation, Byrne will present a brief description of the project to restore and preserve what remains, followed by a screening of the entire 22-minute restoration. 

CORPORAL KATE (DeMille Pictures Corp., 1926) Frequently cited as one of the first war films to feature the female angle, “Corporate Kate” is the story of a pair of Brooklyn manicurists who go to France during WWI to entertain the troops with a song-and-dance act. Both girls struggle not only with the brutalities of war but also with their love for the same man. This is the premiere screening of the newly preserved DeMille Pictures Corp. feature that stars Vera Reynolds, Julia Faye and Kenneth Thompson. Andrew Simpson will provide live musical accompaniment for the evening’s screenings. Seating may be limited for this screening as it is part of “Mostly Lost 6: A Film Identification Workshop” and many of the registered participants will be attending. Black & white, 85 min. No reservations - seating is on a walk-in basis.

 

Win tickets to world premiere of the restored Now We're in the Air, starring Louise Brooks

How would you like to win a pair of tickets to the world premiere of the recently found & newly restored Louise Brooks' film Now We're in the Air (1927)? The 23-minute fragment will be shown with the recently recovered Clara Bow film, Get Your Man (1927), on Friday June 2nd at the historic Castro Theater in San Francisco. To enter, simply email the Louise Brooks Society (LouiseBrooksSociety AT gmailDOTcom) a sentence or two or three stating as to why you would like to see this very special program. (This contest does not provide transportation to the theater, simply entrance in.) The winner will be picked and announced on Saturday, May 27th.

Imagine being among the first people in the world to see these two films 90 years after they were first released--and what's more, to see them on the big screen in a silent era theater and with live musical accompaniment! It's almost like time travel. Here is a little more about this very special event.

FRIDAY, JUNE 2

 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1:00 pm  $16 / $14
direct ticket link

GET YOUR MAN with live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Directed by Dorothy Arzner | USA, 1927 | 53 m.
With Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Josef Swickard

Silent-era “It” girl Clara Bow falls for French aristocrat (Buddy Rogers!) after they are locked overnight in a Paris wax museum. There’s a sticking point, though—Rogers’s blueblood is betrothed to another! The Library of Congress has reconstructed the film from recovered materials, filling in missing sequences with key photos and intertitles—and in the process rescuing Bow’s incandescent performance for posterity.
Restored by the Library of Congress
Presented in 35mm

NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR with live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Directed by Frank Strayer | USA, 1927 | 23 m.
With Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks

Plus: SFSFF’s Rob Byrne made a remarkable discovery in the National Film Archive of the Czech Republic—footage from the lost Wallace Beery/Louise Brooks comedy, Now We’re in the Air! He was able to restore the 23-minute fragment in time for its premiere in this program.
Restored by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Presented in 35mm

Remember, to enter, simply email the Louise Brooks Society (LouiseBrooksSociety AT gmailDOTcom) a sentence or two or three stating as to why you would like to see this very special program.

Win tickets to Now We're in the Air starring Louise Brooks

How would you like to win a pair of tickets to the world premiere of the recently found & newly restored Louise Brooks' film Now We're in the Air (1927)? The 23-minute fragment will be shown with the recently recovered Clara Bow film, Get Your Man (1927), on Friday June 2nd at the historic Castro Theater in San Francisco. To enter, simply email the Louise Brooks Society (LouiseBrooksSociety AT gmailDOTcom) a sentence or two or three stating as to why you would like to see this very special program. (This contest does not provide transportation to the theater, simply entrance in.) The winner will be picked and announced on Saturday, May 27th.

Imagine being among the first people in the world to see these two films 90 years after they were first released--and what's more, to see them on the big screen in a silent era theater and with live musical accompaniment! It's almost like time travel. Here is a little more about this very special event.

FRIDAY, JUNE 2

 San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1:00 pm  $16 / $14
direct ticket link

GET YOUR MAN with live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Directed by Dorothy Arzner | USA, 1927 | 53 m.
With Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Josef Swickard

Silent-era “It” girl Clara Bow falls for French aristocrat (Buddy Rogers!) after they are locked overnight in a Paris wax museum. There’s a sticking point, though—Rogers’s blueblood is betrothed to another! The Library of Congress has reconstructed the film from recovered materials, filling in missing sequences with key photos and intertitles—and in the process rescuing Bow’s incandescent performance for posterity.
Restored by the Library of Congress
Presented in 35mm

NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR with live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Directed by Frank Strayer | USA, 1927 | 23 m.
With Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Louise Brooks

Plus: SFSFF’s Rob Byrne made a remarkable discovery in the National Film Archive of the Czech Republic—footage from the lost Wallace Beery/Louise Brooks comedy, Now We’re in the Air! He was able to restore the 23-minute fragment in time for its premiere in this program.
Restored by San Francisco Silent Film Festival
Presented in 35mm

Remember, to enter, simply email the Louise Brooks Society (LouiseBrooksSociety AT gmailDOTcom) a sentence or two or three stating as to why you would like to see this very special program.

Major Louise Brooks Retrospective in Zurich, Switzerland Oct 5 - Nov 18, 2020

FilmPodium has announced the dates for its rescheduled Louise Brooks retrospective. The 15 film series, originally set to take place earlier this year but cancelled due to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, is now set to take place October 5 through November 18, 2020. It looks to be a must attend event for any Louise Brooks fan or silent movie buff or film scholar in the region. FilmPodium is located in Zurich, Switzerland. For more information on the series, including informative program notes and the times and dates of each screening, visit HERE.

I have known about this event since it was in the planning stages, and have exchanged emails with Filmpodium offering suggestions. I am especially pleased the series will include the surviving fragment of Now We're in the Air, whose preservation I had a small hand in helping with. (You'll find my name in the credits, as well as in the credits at the end of Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu.) Once considered lost, Now We're in the Air has not been shown in Switzerland since the late 1920s! I don't know how long it is, but as well it must be decades since films like The Show Off, Love Em and Leave Em, or even God's Gift to Women were screened in Switzerland. More bold choices. And too, I don't know of any other series or retrospective which has shown both the silent and sound versions of Prix de Beaute back to back! That is a bold programming; also a fresh choice was showing a film in homage to Brooks, The Chaperone. The films in the series include:

It's the Old Army Game (1926) with Now We're in the Air (1927)

The Show Off (1926)

Love Em and Leave Em (1926)

A Girl in Every Port (1928)

Beggars of Life (1928)

Die Buchse der Pandora (1929)

The Canary Murder Case (1929)

Tagebuch einer Verlonenen (1929)

Prix de Beaute (1930) both the silent and sound versions

God's Gift to Women (1930)

Overland Stage Raiders (1938) with Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998) documentary

The Chaperone (2018)

Most of the films will only be shown once, though a few will be shown on multiple occasions. All of the silent films will feature live musical accompaniment, which will feature acclaimed UK silent film accompaniest Neil Brand, friend to the Louise Brooks Society Stephen Horne, Martin Christ, André Desponds, Ephrem Lüchinger, Samuel Messerli and Neal Sugarman. Notes for the series were penned by Elisabeth Bronfen, who described Brooks as an icon of the Roaring Twenties, noting that "Her natural acting style was decades ahead of her time, her appeal remains immortal."

Last year, the Melbourne Cinémathèque in Melbourne, Australia put on a major film retrospective along similar lines titled "Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks". Something must be in the air! 

Louise Brooks, the Persistent Movie Star

Louise Brooks, the silent film star best known for her bobbed hair as well as for her charismatic performance as Lulu in Pandora’s Box, is once again enjoying the spotlight. This year, 2017, promises to be a big year in the actress’ afterlife.

The American-born actress made relatively few films—24 in total, and most movie goers have likely seen only one or two of her European films. That should change now that Brooks’ best American film, Beggars of Life (1928), has just been released on DVD and Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Digitally restored from film elements held at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, this new DVD marks the film’s first real release. For classic film buffs, it is a must see. [As the author of a new book on the film, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, I am enthusiastically biased.]

Chances are, even if you are a film buff, you haven’t seen Beggars of Life—at least not like this. Though widely acclaimed when first released, the film fell between the cracks of movie history and was considered lost for decades. Only recently, since its digital restoration, has this once-obscure film returned to general circulation. The new print is bright and detailed and a thrill to watch.

Based on the bestselling novelistic memoir by the celebrated “hobo author” Jim Tully, Beggars of Life was directed by multiple Academy Award winner William Wellman the year after he directed Wings (the first film to win the Oscar for Best Picture). It is a rough and tumble story about an orphan girl (Brooks) who kills her abusive step-father and flees the law, dressing as a boy and riding the rails through a hobo underground ruled over by future Oscar winner Wallace Beery. The film also includes leading man Richard Arlen, as well as the pioneering African-American actor Edgar “Blue” Washington.

Movie goers will have a chance to see Beggars of Life on the big screen in the coming months. The Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts is set to screen Beggars of Life on September 5. The historic movie house will also screen Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), another digitally restored film starring the actress, on September 6. And on September 7, the Brattle reprises both films with special double bill.

The Cambridge screenings take place just before a larger Louise Brooks series at Film Forum in New York City. The famous repertory house is set to screen Diary of a Lost Girl on September 17, Beggars of Life on September 19, Pandora’s Box on October 1, followed by a reprise of Diary of a Lost Girl on October 14. Each film will feature live musical accompaniment by silent film pianist Steve Sterner.

Brooks is also the focus of a multi-film series in Helsinki, Finland. That country’s National Audiovisual Institute, KAVI, is set to show Beggars of Life on October 12 and 15, Diary of a Lost Girl on October 19 and 21, Prix de beaute on October 27 and 29, and Pandora’s Box on November 27 and December 1. Elsewhere, Pandora’s Box will be shown in Manila, Phillipines on September 3 as part of the 11th annual International Silent Film Festival Manila.

In the United States, other screenings of Beggars of Life are set to take place in Cleveland, Ohio at the Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art on September 23 (with an introduction by Tully biographer Paul Bauer), and in Madison, Wisconsin at the University Cinematheque on December 1.

The new Kino Lorber Beggars of Life is a deluxe package. Besides being digitally restored, the Kino Lorber release has a fine audio commentary by actor William Wellman, Jr., the son of the film’s director; an audio commentary by yours truly, Thomas Gladysz; a booklet essay by film critic Nick Pinkerton; a graceful musical score by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra; and swell, original cover art by artist Wayne Shellabarger.

Word has also gotten out that Kino Lorber will also release the W.C. Fields / Louise Brooks film, It's the Old Army Game (1926) sometime later this year. All this Louise Brooks activity (the DVD release, my book, and the subsequent screenings) comes after two major announcements earlier in the year.

In March, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival revealed that film preservationist Rob Byrne had found a 23-minute fragment of the long missing 1927 Brooks film, Now We’re in the Air, in an archive in the Czech Republic. Newly restored, the film made a well received world premiere at the San Francisco Festival in June, followed by a showing before archivists and historians at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Next up for the once lost work is the prestigious Le Giornate del Cinema Muto | Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy in October, where Now We’re in the Air will be shown as part of the Festival’s “Rediscoveries and Restorations” program.

That’s not all the news from Europe.
The British Film Institute recently announced the forthcoming publication of a new book on Pandora’s Box by Pamela Hutchinson, a London critic who writes on early film for the Guardian newspaper and Sight & Sound magazine. Hutchinson’s book, an illustrated study of the once controversial film, will be published as part of the BFI’s familiar Film Classics series. The book will be released in Europe on November 21, and in the United States on December 19. Screenings of Pandora’s Box around England are in the works.

But wait, there’s more! In February, an opera with a Louise Brooks inspired character and with music by Stewart Copeland (the co-founder and drummer for the Police) opened in Chicago. The Invention of Morel will be staged in Long Beach, California in March 2018.

In August, PBS announced that Columbus and Split star Haley Lu Richardson will play Louise Brooks in The Chaperone, joining Elizabeth McGovern in a period drama from PBS Masterpiece. The Chaperone, based on Laura Moriarty’s best-selling novel from 2013, is scripted by Julian Fellowes and directed by Michael Engler. PBS announced principal photography has started on the film, which will air on PBS stations nationwide after its initial theatrical run in 2018.

McGovern, who is also a producer, optioned the novel and worked with Fellowes (both were involved with the popular PBS series Downton Abbey) to adapt the story for the big screen. In The Chaperone, McGovern portrays a woman whose life is changed when she escorts a teenage and soon to be famous Brooks to New York in the early 1920s.

Notably, The Chaperone is the first film from PBS Masterpiece, and, it’s the first film to feature Brooks as a central character.

That’s not bad for an actress whose last film was shot more than 80 years ago.

Thomas Gladysz is the Director of the Louise Brooks Society, a website and online archive launched in 1995. Gladysz contributed an audio commentary to the Kino Lorber release of Beggars of Life, and recently published a book on the movie, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film. He also had a small hand in the restoration of the lost Louise Brooks’ film, Now We’re in the Air. In July, Gladysz was a guest DJ on KDVS (90.3 FM in Davis, California), where he played Louise Brooks-related rock and pop music.

A variant of this article originally appeared in Huffington Post

Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks

My recent trip to Berkeley (see previous post) resulted in a little more material for my forthcoming book, Around the World with Louise Brooks. It's a worldly look at the silent film star, and how she was seen in various countries around the world in the 1920s and 1930s. I hope to have it completed by the end of the year.

Something must be in the air, because coincidentally I just learned that the Melbourne Cinémathèque in Melbourne, Australia is putting on a major film retrospective along similar lines. "Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks" takes place October 23 through November 6. More information may be found HERE.

According to the Cinémathèque site:

“An actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality, and a beauty unparalleled in film history” is how film historian Kevin Brownlow described Louise Brooks (1906–1985), whose short but iconic career was almost lost to history.

Brooks signed her first contract with Paramount Pictures in 1925, but her ultra-modern style, jet-black bob and inscrutable expression made her an actress out of time. After three years and 14 films, Brooks, fed up with Hollywood, left the US for Germany, where she made two seminal films with G. W. Pabst in 1929 – Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. She subsequently returned to Hollywood but languished in obscurity, quietly retiring in 1938.

All but forgotten for the next two decades, interest in her career was rekindled by the Cinémathèque Française’s “60 Years of Cinema” exhibition in Paris in 1955, which featured a giant portrait of Brooks mounted above its entrance. Asked why he had chosen the relatively obscure Brooks over Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich for such prominent placement, exhibition director Henri Langlois exclaimed, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!” Aesthetic tastes had caught up to her onscreen persona, and Brooks was finally recognised as a magnetic screen presence and, in the words of French critic Ado Kyrou, “the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece”. Now recognised as an icon of the Jazz Age, Brooks’ intense femininity, flapper style and coyly ambiguous sexuality have made her one of the era’s brightest and most enduring stars.

This season includes the majority of her iconic performances in both Hollywood and Europe and profiles her collaborations with key directors such as Pabst, Wellman and Hawks.

The schedule features seven of Louise Brooks silent films, including the recently found surviving fragment of Now We're in the Air. The Louise Brooks Society had a hand in the preservation of Now We're in the Air, and no doubt, this screening marks the first time the popular comedy has been shown in Australia in nearly 90 years. In fact, as Around the World with Louise Brooks documents, one of the last known screenings of the film anywhere in the world took place in southern Australia in the small town of Balaklava in 1932 -- five years after its American release and well into the sound era. As described on the Melbourne Cinémathèque website, here is the schedule of films.


October 23

6:30pm – PANDORA’S BOX
G. W. Pabst (1929) 136 mins PG

Screen goddess Brooks burns up the screen as the sexually energised and self-destructive Lulu in Pabst’s most celebrated film. A complex reflection on the sexual pathology and social hedonism of Weimar Germany, Pabst and Brooks’ exciting and provocative partnership created one of silent cinema’s most enduring, liberating and strangely moving works, with critics and audiences still waxing lyrical about its smoky sensuality today. David Thomson claimed it as “among the most erotic films ever made” and praised the “vivacious, fatal intimacy” of Brooks’ magnetic performance.

Courtesy of The British Film Institute

8:55pm – THE CANARY MURDER CASE
Malcolm St. Clair (1929) 82 mins Unclassified 15+*

Brooks features as The Canary, an audacious nightclub singer whose penchant for blackmail and two-timing leaves no shortage of suspects after she falls victim to foul play. This tantalising whodunit was originally completed as a silent picture, but Paramount insisted on converting it to a “talkie”. Already ensconced in Berlin, Brooks refused to return to the US to complete any voice work, so her role was dubbed (and partly reshot) by Margaret Livingston (the Woman From the City in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans). With William Powell, Jean Arthur and Eugene Pallette.

October 30

6:30pm – DIARY OF A LOST GIRL
G. W. Pabst (1929) 113 mins Unclassified 15+*

The second collaboration – after Pandora’s Box – between Brooks and German director Pabst is a frank and revealing look at male chauvinism and bourgeois hypocrisy in Weimar Germany. Based on the controversial bestselling novel by Margarete Böhme and filmed in the social-realist style of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, it was considered pornographic on its release, touching on rape, lesbianism and prostitution. Brooks expressively plays an innocent girl cast adrift in a world of lecherous and predatory men, a victim of circumstance doomed to a life of ill repute.

8:35pm – A GIRL IN EVERY PORT
Howard Hawks (1928) 78 mins Unclassified 15+*

Since last screened by the Melbourne Cinémathèque in 2002, the seismic shifts in societal perceptions of gender representation have made Hawks’ rambunctious late silent perhaps even more fascinating. Brooks’ character has been praised as an embryonic Hawksian woman – strong-willed, independent, sexual – but her depiction as a grasping schemer threatening the purity of the sailors’ masculine bond is as revealing and provocative as it is problematic. This key early Hawks’ film co-stars Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong.

Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive.

Preceded by

Now We’re in the Air
Frank R. Strayer (1927) 23 mins (fragment).

Louise Brooks makes a memorable appearance in this newly discovered fragment of a World War I aviation comedy.

35mm print courtesy of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Library of Congress, Washington.

November 6
6:30pm – BEGGARS OF LIFE
William A. Wellman (1928) 100 mins Unclassified 15+*

This gritty study of hobo life on the rails is based on the novelistic memoir of the same name by real-life vagabond Jim Tully. Brooks expert Thomas Gladysz holds that while Wellman’s “artfully photographed, morally dark tale of the down-and-out” gives future Oscar winner Wallace Beery top billing for “an especially vital performance”, it is Brooks who “dominates the screen in what is arguably her best role in her best American film”. With its provocative themes of sexual abuse and murder, the film presents a truly transgressive view of the US just before the Great Depression.

Courtesy of The George Eastman Museum.

8:20pm – PRIX DE BEAUTÉ (MISS EUROPE)
Augusto Genina (1930) 93 mins Unclassified 15+*

Not widely seen for decades after its production, and only available in an incomplete form until recently, Genina’s dynamic movie is notable for being Brooks’ final lead performance. The film blends stark neo-realism and elaborate fantasy in its exploration of a young woman’s rise to fame and her discomfort with the social expectations of the female sex. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s extraordinary treatment of light and dark beautifully complements Brooks’ sparkling onscreen presence. Screenplay by René Clair and G. W. Pabst.

Louise Brooks in Australia - now and then

A major film retrospective, "Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks," is currently taking place in Australia at the Melbourne Cinémathèque. The retrospective, which runs through November 6, features seven of Louise Brooks silent films, including the majority of her iconic performances from the United States and Europe profiling her working under such noted directors as William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and G. W. Pabst. More information, including newly added links to articles, may be found HERE.

Coincidentally, for the last year, I have been working on a two volume book project, Around the World with Louise Brooks, in which the nation of Australia is something of a star! (The first volume looks at Louise Brooks, the actress. The second volume looks at Brooks' 24 films. As of now, I have about 850 pages completed, and hope to have the books done by the end of the year... fingers crossed.)

In a nod to Australia and its ongoing appreciation of the actress... what follows are a couple three highlights from my work in progress. 

Notably, one of the films to be screened at the Australian retrospective is the surviving fragment of Now We're in the Air. The Louise Brooks Society had a hand in the preservation of the film, and no doubt, the Melbourne Cinémathèque screening marks the first time the once popular comedy has been shown in Australia in nearly 90 years. 

The above newspaper advertisement appeared on the front page of April 14, 1932 edition of the Wooroora Producer, a newspaper based in Balaklava, Australia (95 km north of Adelaide) and circulating in nearby Port Wakefield, Bowmans, Long Plains, Avon, Erith, Whitwarta, Mount Templeton, Everard Central, Nantawrra, Hamley Bridge, Mallala Stockyard Creek, Barabba, Alma, Owen, Halbury, Hoyleton and other communities in South Australia. The advertisement documents what may well have been one of the last recorded public screening of Now We’re in the Air anywhere in the world, a 1927 film which today survives only in incomplete form. This ad is unusual in that it is specifically dated, informing locals a couple of days in advance of the small community’s once a week screening – in this instance two five year old silent films. The other film is IT, starring Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno. The venue, the Balaklava Institute, was likely the local town hall. It still stands.

A 1927 Brooks' film which is now considered lost is Rolled Stockings. It too had what is likely its last recorded public screening anywhere in the world in Australia. The otherwise unremarkable newspaper advertisement pictured below documents the occasion, which took place in October 1931. Four years after its American release – and well into the sound era, Brooks’ 1927 “youth picture” was paired with William Wyler’s action adventure film, The Thunder Riders (Universal, 1928). This silent double-bill was shown at a theater in Darwin, Australia known as The Stadium (aka Don Stadium or Don Pictures), an approximately 100-seat open-air sports and entertainment venue largely used during the dry months of the year. Below left is an exterior view, and below right is an interior view.

Image source: Northern Territory Library

Darwin, the former frontier outpost named after the British naturalist, is situated on the Timor Sea and is the capital of the Australia’s Northern Territory. Far from just about everywhere but the closest port to the Dutch East Indies, Darwin was an alternative entry or departure point for entertainment companies coming to or departing from the Australian mainland. Consequently, the Stadium theatre also hosted occasional vaudeville shows, including vaudeville and silent pictures, or vaudeville and boxing. I can't quite tell, but it appears there might be a boxing match going on in the interior view on the right.

And yet another lost 1927 Brooks' film which had what was likely it's last documented public screening in Australia is The City Gone Wild. It too was shown in Darwin in the Don Pictures Stadium theatre. The newspaper advertisement shown below dates from September 1931, four years after its initial American release. And again, well into the sound era! Back in the 1930s, Darwin, Australia was pretty far from everywhere and it was where "old" silent films went at the end of their exhibition life. Where they went from there is anybody's guess....

Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival to feature two Louise Brooks films on November 17

Thomas Gladysz and Frank Buxton

The Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day celebration of silent film, is scheduled to show two seldom exhibited Louise Brooks' films, It’s the Old Army Game (1926), and the surviving fragment of Now We’re in the Air (1927). For the latter film, the event marks the film's first screening in the Pacific Northwest in nearly 90 years!

According to it's website, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge, Washington is proud to present the debut of the Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day cinematic excursion exploring the pleasures, history and lost art of American silent film.

The Festival is a tribute to the late Frank Buxton (1930-2018), a local resident and longtime champion, advocate and appreciator of the arts. Programming for the Festival was curated by Frank's friend and program collaborator John Ellis in partnership with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. More information HERE.

WEEKEND PROGRAM

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2018

- 6:30 pm - Opening Party
Visiting artists, guests and weekend pass holders enjoy a pre-screening reception with food and refreshment in the Museums First Floor Gallery

- 7:30 pm - Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)Original score from Erin O'Hara

The Buxton Silent Film festival kicks off with a rare screening of Alfred Hitchcock's silent version of Blackmail, one of his earliest and most atmospheric films. The dark drama is orchestrated by Erin O'Hara, who created the entire score from the point of view of Alice, Anny Ondres character who murders her would be rapist with a bread knife. With an ensemble of electric and acoustic instruments and voices, O'Hara expresses the interior voice of heroine Alice, as she navigates her way through a journey of assault, survival and the murky search for justice. One reviewer said, Her soundtrack is both a signal contribution to Hitchcock's art and a bold rejoinder to it.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018

- 10 am - Classic Comedy ShortsMusical accompaniment by Miles and Karina (David Miles Keenan and Nova Karina Devonie)
Featured films:

• One Week (1920) with Buster Keaton
• The Immigrant (1917) with Charlie Chaplin
• Battle of the Century (1927) from Laurel & Hardy

- 2:00 pm - Louise Brooks TributeMusical accompaniment by Miles and Karina (David Miles Keenan and Nova Karina Devonie)
Featured films:

• Its the Old Army Game (1926) with W.C. Fields and Louise Brooks
• Now We're In the Air (1927) starring Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, and Louise Brooks

- 7:30 pm - The Unknown starring Lon Chaney (1927)
Original Score composed and performed live by Jovino Santos Neto Quarteto
The Unknown is an American silent horror film directed by Tod Browning, a story of yearning, frustration, resentment and betrayal. Lon Chaney stars as carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless and Joan Crawford is the scantily clad carnival girl he hopes to marry. The film is brought to life by a live score composed and performed by Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto, a five-piece local jazz ensemble led by Brazilian jazz pianist Jovino Santos Neto. Neto offers a fresh take on the musical conventions of silent film accompaniment. Instead, he mines the deep, dark melancholy conveyed by the actors' facial expressions to create a 50-minute suite that blends sounds, textures and improv from vibraphone, bandoneon, bass, drums, percussion, piano, flute, melodica and electronics. Special thanks to Seattle Theater Group. Join film-goers for a short after-party.

I knew Frank Buxton, and know that he loved silent film, comedy, and Louise Brooks! He was a many of many accomplishments in a remarkable and eclectic career. Read the obits from Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and KitSap Sun. This event, the Frank Buxton Silent Film festival, is fitting tribute. Above is a picture of Frank on stage with Buster Keaton in 1949. Frank had autographed the page in my Keaton book where this picture appeared, and pointed himself out. (Buxton was also the co-author of a classic book on early radio, The Big Broadcast.)

Frank Buxton and I kept in touch over the years, chatting about film books and our favorite stars. Not long before he died, I was able to share with him a copy of my recent book, Now We're in the Air, a Companion to the Once "Lost" Film.

Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks - retrospective begins October 23

The Melbourne Cinémathèque in Melbourne, Australia is putting on a major film retrospective titled "Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks." The retrospective runs October 23 through November 6. More information may be found HERE.

According to the Cinémathèque site:

“An actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality, and a beauty unparalleled in film history” is how film historian Kevin Brownlow described Louise Brooks (1906–1985), whose short but iconic career was almost lost to history.

Brooks signed her first contract with Paramount Pictures in 1925, but her ultra-modern style, jet-black bob and inscrutable expression made her an actress out of time. After three years and 14 films, Brooks, fed up with Hollywood, left the US for Germany, where she made two seminal films with G. W. Pabst in 1929 – Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. She subsequently returned to Hollywood but languished in obscurity, quietly retiring in 1938.

All but forgotten for the next two decades, interest in her career was rekindled by the Cinémathèque Française’s “60 Years of Cinema” exhibition in Paris in 1955, which featured a giant portrait of Brooks mounted above its entrance. Asked why he had chosen the relatively obscure Brooks over Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich for such prominent placement, exhibition director Henri Langlois exclaimed, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!” Aesthetic tastes had caught up to her onscreen persona, and Brooks was finally recognised as a magnetic screen presence and, in the words of French critic Ado Kyrou, “the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece”. Now recognised as an icon of the Jazz Age, Brooks’ intense femininity, flapper style and coyly ambiguous sexuality have made her one of the era’s brightest and most enduring stars.

This season includes the majority of her iconic performances in both Hollywood and Europe and profiles her collaborations with key directors such as Pabst, Wellman and Hawks.

The schedule features seven of Louise Brooks silent films, including the recently found fragment of Now We're in the Air. The Louise Brooks Society had a hand in the preservation of Now We're in the Air, and no doubt, this screening marks the first time the popular comedy has been shown in Australia in nearly 90 years.

October 23

6:30pm – PANDORA’S BOX
G. W. Pabst (1929) 136 mins PG

Screen goddess Brooks burns up the screen as the sexually energised and self-destructive Lulu in Pabst’s most celebrated film. A complex reflection on the sexual pathology and social hedonism of Weimar Germany, Pabst and Brooks’ exciting and provocative partnership created one of silent cinema’s most enduring, liberating and strangely moving works, with critics and audiences still waxing lyrical about its smoky sensuality today. David Thomson claimed it as “among the most erotic films ever made” and praised the “vivacious, fatal intimacy” of Brooks’ magnetic performance.
Courtesy of The British Film Institute

8:55pm – THE CANARY MURDER CASE
Malcolm St. Clair (1929) 82 mins Unclassified 15+*

Brooks features as The Canary, an audacious nightclub singer whose penchant for blackmail and two-timing leaves no shortage of suspects after she falls victim to foul play. This tantalising whodunit was originally completed as a silent picture, but Paramount insisted on converting it to a “talkie”. Already ensconced in Berlin, Brooks refused to return to the US to complete any voice work, so her role was dubbed (and partly reshot) by Margaret Livingston (the Woman From the City in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans). With William Powell, Jean Arthur and Eugene Pallette.

October 30

6:30pm – DIARY OF A LOST GIRL
G. W. Pabst (1929) 113 mins Unclassified 15+*

The second collaboration – after Pandora’s Box – between Brooks and German director Pabst is a frank and revealing look at male chauvinism and bourgeois hypocrisy in Weimar Germany. Based on the controversial bestselling novel by Margarete Böhme and filmed in the social-realist style of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement, it was considered pornographic on its release, touching on rape, lesbianism and prostitution. Brooks expressively plays an innocent girl cast adrift in a world of lecherous and predatory men, a victim of circumstance doomed to a life of ill repute.

8:35pm – A GIRL IN EVERY PORT
Howard Hawks (1928) 78 mins Unclassified 15+*

Since last screened by the Melbourne Cinémathèque in 2002, the seismic shifts in societal perceptions of gender representation have made Hawks’ rambunctious late silent perhaps even more fascinating. Brooks’ character has been praised as an embryonic Hawksian woman – strong-willed, independent, sexual – but her depiction as a grasping schemer threatening the purity of the sailors’ masculine bond is as revealing and provocative as it is problematic. This key early Hawks’ film co-stars Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong. Print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive. Preceded by

Now We’re in the Air
Frank R. Strayer (1927) 23 mins (fragment).

Louise Brooks makes a memorable appearance in this newly discovered fragment of a World War I aviation comedy. 35mm print courtesy of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Library of Congress, Washington.

November 6

6:30pm – BEGGARS OF LIFE
William A. Wellman (1928) 100 mins Unclassified 15+*

This gritty study of hobo life on the rails is based on the novelistic memoir of the same name by real-life vagabond Jim Tully. Brooks expert Thomas Gladysz holds that while Wellman’s “artfully photographed, morally dark tale of the down-and-out” gives future Oscar winner Wallace Beery top billing for “an especially vital performance”, it is Brooks who “dominates the screen in what is arguably her best role in her best American film”. With its provocative themes of sexual abuse and murder, the film presents a truly transgressive view of the US just before the Great Depression.
Courtesy of The George Eastman Museum.

8:20pm – PRIX DE BEAUTÉ (MISS EUROPE)
Augusto Genina (1930) 93 mins Unclassified 15+*

Not widely seen for decades after its production, and only available in an incomplete form until recently, Genina’s dynamic movie is notable for being Brooks’ final lead performance. The film blends stark neo-realism and elaborate fantasy in its exploration of a young woman’s rise to fame and her discomfort with the social expectations of the female sex. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s extraordinary treatment of light and dark beautifully complements Brooks’ sparkling onscreen presence. Screenplay by René Clair and G. W. Pabst.

Looking back : the 1927 Louise Brooks film Now We're in the Air

I will never win an Academy Award, but in 2017 I was given the next best thing - a limited edition giphoscope from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in recognition of my efforts toward the restoration of the once lost Louise Brooks' film, Now We're in the Air (1927). My name is on a plaque on the base of this "analog gif player," and it also appears in the acknowledgments of the restored film. This giphoscope, of which there are only a half-dozen or so featuring the Brooks' film (that's my understanding), was handcrafted in Italy. 

I shot a short video of my giphoscope for the newly updated Louise Brooks Society Instagram account, which I would encourage everyone to check out. You can view my video short below or at https://www.instagram.com/louisebrookssociety/  After posting the brief clip to the Instagram account, I figured I would write something up this blog.

My wife and I had a small hand in helping bring this film back to the screen, and we and the Louise Brooks Society are thanked in the credits which follow the restored fragment. It was an honor to be asked to help work on the project. It was also exciting! I got to see raw footage of the surviving material (then with Czech intertitles), and helped put the fragmentary pieces back into proper order and with correct English-language intertitles. The story of the film and its restoration by Rob Byrne (seen above giving me a giphoscope) is told in a book which I authored in 2017, Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once Lost Film.

This book tells the story of the film’s making, its reception, and its discovery by film preservationist Robert Byrne. Also considered is the surprising impact this otherwise little known film had on Brooks’ life and career. The book features two rare fictionalizations of the movie story, more than 75 little seen images, detailed credits, trivia, and a foreword by Byrne. 

The book is widely available: One can buy it NEW from Amazon (USA) | Indiebound | Bookshop.org | Powells | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Larry Edmunds (Hollywood, CA) | George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY)

 

Or, buy the English-language edition from Amazon Australia | Brazil | Canada | France | Germany | India | Italy | Japan | Mexico | Netherlands | Poland | Singapore | Spain | Turkey | United Arab Emirates | United Kingdom

 

The English-language edition is also available from Open Trolley (Indonesia) and MightyApe (New Zealand) 

It is a book that every Louise Brooks fan will want to read. It is also a great deal at only $15.00 in paperback.