Friday, May 31, 2013

Louise Brooks, the toast of Paris 1929

Louise Brooks was the toast of Paris while she was in France making Prix de Beauté. The film was in production between August 29 through September 27, 1929. (The film was released August 20, 1930.)

Brooks appeared on the covers of magazines, was the subject of numerous articles, and had her picture taken by one of the leading photography studios in the city, the Studio Lorelle. The image below shows Brooks' portrait on display in a Parisian shop window.


Thursday, May 30, 2013

Re: Silent version of Prix de Beauté screening in San Francisco

As was mention here earlier, on Thursday, July 18th, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will screen a new restoration of the RARE silent version of Prix de Beauté (1930), with musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne. The screening opens this year's annual festival, the largest such festival in North America. It is an opportunity to see the least seen version of any one of Louise Brooks' films. Below is a rare image from the film. And here is what the Festival website has to say: 

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Silent version of Prix de Beauté to screen in San Francisco

On Thursday, July 18th, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will screen a new restoration of the silent version of Prix de Beauté (1930), with musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne. The screening opens this year's annual festival, and is a very rare opportunity to see the least seen version of one of Louise Brooks' finest films. Here is what the Festival website has to say:




France, 1930 Director Augusto Genina
Cast Louise Brooks, Georges Charlia, H. Bandini, A. Nicolle, M. Ziboulsky, Yves Glad, Alex Bernard

Prix de Beauté marks Louise Brooks’s last starring role in a feature. Less known than her work with G.W. Pabst (Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl), Prix de Beauté was marred by its foray into early sound (Brooks’s voice was dubbed). Our presentation is the superior silent version recently restored by the Cineteca di Bologna. Brooks is stunning as Lucienne, the “everygirl” typist who enters a beauty contest and is introduced to a shiny world of fame and modernity. But Prix’s script, a collaboration between René Clair and G.W. Pabst, doesn’t leave Lucienne in a fairy tale bubble but leads to a powerful, moving denouement. Cinematographers Rudolph Maté and Louis Née make beautiful use of Brooks’s glorious face. Approximately 108 minutes.

General $20 / Member $18

Buy Tickets and Passes Here!

Friday, May 24, 2013

Berlin Exhibit :: Diversity Destroyed

If you have an interest in Wiemar Germany, then don't fail to check out Diversity Destroyed: Berlin 1933 - 1938 - 1945. It looks at what happened in Germany and to German culture in the years after the Nazi's came to power. 

According to its website, "Today, Berlin enjoys a global reputation as a modern, tolerant and culturally diverse metropolis. The 2013 Theme Year 'Diversity Destroyed' will endeavor to communicate the importance and sensitive nature of these democratic values and achievements. The forthcoming Theme Year will highlight the social and cultural diversity that was destroyed in Berlin under the National Socialist regime in the years following 1933."

Wikipedia has a rather extensive page on the history of the Wiemar Republic, the German state which existed between 1918 and 1933. Louise Brooks worked in Germany at the time, during the years 1928 - 1929.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Diary of a Lost Girl screens twice TODAY in Brooklyn

I just found out about this screening of the Louise Brooks film Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) at Spectacle in Brooklyn, New York. I wish I could be there. Sounds like it will be an interesting viewing and listening experience. More info here.


According to the Spectacle website: "On May 23rd, Ana Lola Roman will provide live electronics, synths, beats, live vocal atmospheres, and drum pads to provide a futuristic, timeless, modular, and modern soundtrack/score to G. W. Pabst’s first Louis Brooks’ film. Roman’s haunting, lush, and minimal flourishes will provide a sound-scape that teeters on suspense, sexuality, raw-eroticism, and danger. This will be a chance to see silent film’s penultimate Muse; the vivid innocence, playfulness, and primal, yet refined beauty of Louise Brooks through Roman’s modern, raw, animistic, refined lens.

Louise Brooks, the silent film star who very well could have been the first to engage in the earliest version of ‘method’ acting, stars in Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl. Brooks plays the main character of Thymian, who is forced to face lurid tragedies and brief encounters with scandal and lust.

The premise of the story is disturbingly modern. Diary of a Lost Girl plays on fears we could face at anytime. We see Thymian take on a variety of misfortunes all while forced into a class-system she was not born into and which is clearly beneath her. Modern viewers will first notice that this film, released in 1929, is the first of its kind to deal with problems of exploitation, prostitution, and abandonment. Even before Lolita, or before Taxi Driver, this silent film eerily depicts a new genre of film to come."

Poster by Domokos (Tit’nul) from Future Blondes


Wednesday, May 22, 2013

CNN on how Louise Brooks inspired Gatsby actress

CNN has an interesting article about how flapper era women inspired the actresses in the recently released Baz Luhrmann film, The Great Gatsby. The new source asked actresses Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher and Elizabeth Debicki who gave them inspiration for their characters. The actresses mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald's own love interests Ginevra King and Zelda Sayre, along with actresses Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. The piece notes:
Louise Brooks was another great actress of the silent movie era, best known for her films "Pandora's Box" and "Diary of a Lost Girl", both filmed in Germany in 1929.
Among the first to sport a bobbed haircut, it was Brooks who inspired the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, playing "The Great Gatsby" character Jordan Baker in the film.
"She is just fierce, wonderful, intelligent, and I read a lot about her," said Debicki. "She really typified that woman who appeared in the 1920s, completely independent and, like Gatsby, she built herself up, created the image she wanted.
"I had photos of her in my kitchen, everywhere. When I woke up in the morning I would look at Louise Brooks."


For more on Louise Brooks and F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, scroll down to check out earlier blog posts.
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