Lulu in Derbyshire

Pandora's Box, the 1929 film starring Louise Brooks, will be screened in Derbyshire in England on February 27, according to a brief mention in the February 15th Daily Telegraph. 

The Cinema Expose season continues on February 27 with a screening of the silent classic Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks. There will be musical accompaniment by Derbyshire musician John Hodson.

For more information call 01332 340170.

Babes Whose Babeness Matters

What's most amusing, or perhaps interesting, about City Paper's recent article about the most beautiful actresses of all time is Louise Brooks' inclusion. It's not that I don't think she belongs - but the company that she keeps is a rather odd mix. There's Sally Field, Clara Bow, Alyson Hannigan, Maila Nurmi, Traci Lords, Summer Glau, etc.....) This is what the  alternative weekly had to say about Brooks (who ranked 17th):

17) Louise Brooks

An ethereally beautiful booze hound with a salty tongue and caustic wit that rivaled Dorothy Parker's, Louise Brooks disappeared from film after 1938--but not without leaving a permanent mark in the shape of her trademark spit-curled bob. The quintessential flapper, bristling with wry, intelligent sexuality. See Pandora's Box. (EF)

Check out the article and see for yourself.

Isn't it splendid?

Thank you to Meredith who pointed out that this picture of Louise Brooks ran in yesterday's Guardian newspaper. THe British newspaper ran this piece in anticipation, I believe, of a forthcoming Edward Steichen exhibit. Isn't it splendid?

Secrets of a Soul

Secrets of a Soul, a G.W. Pabst film made just three years before Pandora's Box, is coming to DVD in February. Kino will release the film around mid-month. Here is the product description:

A Psychoanalytic Thriller Restored by the Munich Film Museum and the F.W. Murnau Foundation. In the 1920s, film studios around the world sought to capitalize on the public s curiosity about the newborn science of psychoanalysis. In 1925, Hans Neumann (of Ufa s Kulturfilm office) contacted members of Sigmund Freud s inner circle with a plan to make a dramatic film that explores the mystifying process of the interpretation of dreams. With the help of noted psychologists Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, and under the direction of G.W. Pabst (Pandora s Box), SECRETS OF A SOUL was completed. Werner Krauss, who had played the deranged Dr. Caligari six years earlier, stars as a scientist who is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares (designed by Ernö Metzner and photographed by Guido Seeber in a brilliant mix of expressionism and surrealism), he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.

Lulu in Dublin

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, will be screened at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on February 24th. This page contains additional information on the film and screening.

http://dubliniff.ticketsolve.com/performances/performances_for_show/10398

Pandora's Box
24th Feb 2008 at 14:30
133 mins / Savoy theatre

"It’s hard to say quite how much one of the great, late masterpieces of the silent era, G.W. Pabst’s extraordinary, erotic and tragic adaptation/conflation of two Wedekind plays, Pandora’s Box, owes to the electrifying, photogenic and iconic presence of the Kansas-born actress Louise Brooks. It’s an Expressionist-Realist walk with love and death, as the sensual and erotic charge of a Berlin prostitute and Kurfürstendamm revue artist sets herself and all who come in contact with her into a destructive social, emotional and physical spiral, ending with her swooning embrace of Thanatos in the person of a mythical, murderous Jack the Ripper. But it may not have seemed quite so modern, vital and powerful, had Pabst chosen, say, Dietrich, or any of the rumoured 2,000 others who the German director screen-tested for the role of the arch femme-fatale, Lulu. In the words of German critic Lotte Eisner, Wedekind’s Lulu was endowed with an ‘animal beauty, but lacking all moral sense, and doing evil unconsciously’. Brooks had the animal beauty alright – and a modicum of self-destructiveness, as her biographical writings testify – but it is her qualities of intelligence and sheer vitality as Lulu, not her putative ‘reflective passivity’, that ensures that her performance seems as exciting and fresh, as well as disturbingly enigmatic, transgressive and deeply moving, today as it did in 1928. That does not diminish, however, the importance of Pabst’s artistry: his psychological insights, atmospheric use of chiaroscuro lighting and thrilling mise-en-scène, not to mention his taboobreaking audacity in flaunting this ‘corn-fed Hollywood flapper’ and exposing the dark appetites and hypocrisies found in the dank, pansexually decadent salons of Weimar Berlin. All offer a perfect context in which Lulu can dazzle and entice, if not – to borrow the line Nic Ray coined in 1949’s Knock on Any Door’ – ‘to live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse’. - Wally Hammond, Time Out London"

"*3EPKANO are a Dublin based, seven piece band/ensemble who specialise in producing original and innovative soundtracks for films from the silent movie era. The band were formed in early 2004 by Matthew Nolan and Cameron Doyle. The line-up includes 2 electric guitars, bass guitar, keyboards/ organ, drums/percussion, cello and viola – the music is minimalist, guitar based, and almost entirely instrumental."

Something I found

While cruising around the world wide web, I came across a Greek CD released last year (I think) which has everything to do with Louise Brooks. From  what I have been able to find, the song cycle is based on Pandora's Box, the film by G.W. Pabst. Or perhaps, it is somesort of "sound track" or musical accompaniment to the film.  This page has some information on the composer, Sakis Papadimitriou, who has released a few discs inspired by silent films. While this page has additional information on the disc. I haven't yet heard The Song of Lulu, but hope to soon. Might anyone know anything more about this recording?

The Fat Man

I thought you all would like to know that The Fat Man graphic novel project has a brand new web site which features a 50 page preview of this forthcoming work. I mention it because this graphic novel - which features time travel, secret agents, Nazi's and more - even includes Louise Brooks as a character. I have already pre-ordered a copy. More information, sample pages, and more can be found at www.the-fat-man.co.uk

Withnail and I

Steve, a Facebook friend, alerted me to this youtube.com clip from Withnail and I, a 1987 British comedy starring Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann. Perhaps it is because McGann is a well-known Louise Brooks fan that her picture pops up in the kitchen scene in this short clip. Check it out. [The film is at the top of my Netflix cue.]