A cinephilac blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age, with occasional posts about related books, music, art, and history written by Thomas Gladysz. Visit the Louise Brooks Society™ at www.pandorasbox.com
From April 11, 2015 through October 18, 2015 in Colonnade (at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York)
James Card at his desk, ca. 1970.
George Eastman House.
October 25, 2015, marks the 100th birthday of James Card, the
museum’s first curator of motion pictures. Card’s role in building the
moving image collection at George Eastman House and in furthering the
cause for film preservation worldwide is without equal. This exhibition
will celebrate Card’s roles as collector, educator, and showman, through
photographs, film clips, and his own writings about his passion for
film and sharing it with the public.
An extensive series in the Dryden Theatre will showcase films that
influenced Card as a collector and those that would not exist today had
it not been for his preservation work.
The story of Louise Brooks and James Card is intertwined. Among the films scheduled to be shown is Pandora's Box (1929), on April 21st, which Card helped rescue from obscurity.
On April 9th, the Toronto Silent Film Festival will screen Diary of a Lost Girl at 7:00 pm. at the Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave., in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This special screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Bill O'Meara.
And what's more, copies of the Louise Brooks edition of The Diary of a Lost Girl by Margarete Bohme (the book that was the basis for the film) will be for sale at the event.
Directed by G.W. Pabst, the 113 minute, 1929 film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert and Andre Roanne. It is a worthy follow-up to the prior Pabst-Brooks effort, Pandora's Box (1929). And like that legendary film, it was heavily censored in its day and generally disregarded, only to be rediscovered decades later and now widely acclaimed.
Some six years before Louise Brooks played Lulu in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929), the great Danish actress Asta Nielsen played the role in Leopold Jessner's film adaption of Earth Spirit (1923). Here is a terrific 1912 postcard of the actress sporting bangs and a bob.
Here is the line-up of films for the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival, set to take place May 28th through June 1st at the historic Castro Theater in San Francisco. Among the special guests expected to attend are Oscar winner Kevin Brownlow (author of The Parades Gone By), Louise Brooks' fan Paul McGann (the eighth incarnation of Doctor Who), and the celebrated archivist Serge Bromberg, among others. It's an event not to be missed. Among the certain highlights are Colleen Moore in Why Be Good?, Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil, and Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh.
All Quiet On The Western Front
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Lewis Milestone’s filmed version of the classic antiwar drama All Quiet on the Western Front was the first to win Academy Awards for both Outstanding Production and Best Director. At
its release the film was prepared both as a talkie and as a sync-sound
“silent” version with title cards, orchestral score, and sound effects.
But this version was lost until the Library of Congress discovered the
alternate without dialogue and restored it for the anniversary of the
Great War. Leonard Maltin notes, “some film scholars actually prefer
this smoothly-edited edition ... to the familiar talkie because of its
vigorous pacing...” Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque,
the story is told through the heartrending experiences of young Germans
recruited into the carnage of World War I. Our presentation will feature
a new score and live sound effects sound created especially for the
silent version.
Amazing Tales From The Archives
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin
Preservationist and raconteur Serge Bromberg, of Lobster Films in
Paris, will share the entertaining story of finding Maurice Tourneur’s
1914 short FIGURES DE CIRE (HOUSE OF WAX). It took 15 years to unearth
the film, and today it receives a long-awaited screening! Bryony Dixon,
BFI’s senior curator of silent film, brings a treasure trove of footage
about the RMS Lusitania, the British ocean liner that was torpedoed and
sunk by a German U-boat to international outcry 100 years ago. Liverpool-born actor Paul McGann will accompany Dixon’s presentation,
adding narration to the films. Film restorer Robert Byrne will describe
the meticulous process of reconstructing and restoring William
Gillette’s SHERLOCK HOLMES—a film thought lost until a complete dupe
negative was identified in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française last
year. Byrne’s presentation will include the technical, historical, and
curatorial aspects of returning the film to a state as close as possible
to that experienced by audiences almost 100 years ago.
Just added: 2015 marks 100 years since the birth of the Technicolor
Corporation. In recognition of this centennial, Movette Film Transfer's
Jennifer Miko will offer a rare glimpse of a unique home movie shot on
the grounds of La Cuesta Encantada, more commonly known as Hearst
Castle. We will feast our eyes on a stunning tour--filmed in two-strip
Tech--with the architect, Julia Morgan, and the Chief himself, W.R.
Hearst.
Cave of the Spider Women (Pan si dong)
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius
Since so much of early Chinese cinema has been lost, the recent discovery of a nitrate 35mm print of Cave of the Spider Women in the archives of the National Library of Norway was cause for worldwide celebration. Cave of the Spider Women
is a rare example of the magic-spirit film, a popular genre in ’20s
Shanghai, and its story comes from a classic masterpiece of Chinese
literature involving a pilgrim monk and the search for Buddhist texts.
The monk and his followers—monkey, pig, and shark spirit—ward off the
Spider Queen who tries to seduce the pilgrim. The film set Chinese
box-office records in 1927 but was considered lost until the discovery
in Norway.
When the Earth Trembled
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
In 1913, early film mogul Siegmund Lubin decided that the time had
come to begin producing films longer than the one- or two-reel
(10-25-minute) films that were the norm. Keeping with his philosophy
that “spectacles and disasters” were what audiences wanted to see, he
went all-in with his first mega-production, a three-reel film titled When the Earth Trembled, or The Strength of Love, featuring the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire as its centerpiece. At
a time when the Lubin Studio was producing two completed films per
week, an unheard-of four months were devoted to creating the special
effects and collapsing sets that would recreate the disaster. Now more
than one hundred years after its original release, the San Francisco
Silent Film Festival has teamed with EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam to
restore and preserve When the Earth Trembled and return it to the screen.
The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann)
Live musical accompaniment by Berklee Silent Film Orchestra
In this, his greatest role, Emil Jannings plays the chief porter at a
prestigious hotel, a position affording him respect and dignity. His
military-style uniform is the emblem of his stature—especially among
his poor neighbors—and a source of great personal pride, so his
subsequent demotion to washroom attendant and the loss of the uniform is
devastating. The film’s emotional depth is bolstered by its
technical innovation—Murnau’s “unchained” camera is as beautifully
expressive as Jannings’s breathtaking performance and allows the story
to flow without the need for intertitles.
The Ghost Train
Musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne & Frank Bockius, narration by Paul McGann
Based on the hugely successful stage play by Arnold Ridley, The Ghost Train employs a variety of techniques, from animation to superimposition,
that highlight Hungarian director Géza von Bolváry’s visual approach to
storytelling. But for all its foreign influence, The Ghost Train
remains singularly British in its humor and eccentric characters as it
tells the story of travelers stranded overnight at a dubiously haunted
train station. The extant print of the film comes from the British Film
Institute but has French intertitles!
Speedy
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
Harold Lloyd’s last silent film is classic Lloyd, replete with ingenious
gags and hilarious set pieces. Harold ‘Speedy’ plays a good-natured
bumbler who can’t hold down a job. Speedy has two passions: his
girlfriend (Ann Christy) and baseball. The first takes him to the famous
amusement park at Coney Island, the second to Yankee Stadium with Babe
Ruth in tow!
Visages d'enfants
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne
Jacques Feyder’s eloquent Visages d’enfants takes place in a
remote village in the Swiss Alps where the film opens with 11-year-old
Jean (Jean Forest) watching as his mother’s coffin is carried away. This
moving portrayal of childhood grief is told with unwavering honesty and
profound humanity. Film theorist Jean Mitry wrote, “If I could select
only one film from the entire French production of the 1920s, surely it
is Faces of Children that I would save.”
The Donovan Affair
Live musical accompaniment and narration by the Gower Gulch Players
After no-good Jack Donovan kills the lights at a house party for effect,
guests find he’s the knife-skewered victim—and then inspector Jack Holt
is called in. A classic dark-house comedy whodunit, with a
classic denouement, based on a play by the prolific Owen Davis (whose
1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Icebound is currently being revived Off-Off-Broadway), The Donovan Affair was for Capra “the beginning of a true understanding of the skills of
my craft” and his first “100% all-Dialogue Picture.” But its original
soundtrack—recorded on 16” disks (before sound-on-film became
standard)—has long been lost. The one existing print, at the Library of
Congress, is completely silent, rendering the picture completely
incomprehensible. For this special screening at SFSFF, the lost Donovan Affair
soundtrack will be recreated live, with the dialogue instantaneously
dubbed by actors hand-picked for their affinity to the acting style of
the late ’20s and ’30s, along with live music and recreated sound
effects. This unique presentation has been shown only three times
before, in New York and Los Angeles. Aside from these few special
screenings, Donovan has not been seen since its original release, 85 years ago.
Flesh and the Devil
Live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble
Leo (John Gilbert) and Ulrich (Lars Hanson) are companions whose
lifelong friendship is torn apart over their mutual love for the
beautiful Felicitas (Greta Garbo). Clarence Brown’s superb
direction and William H. Daniels’s exquisite photography are matched by
brilliant performances. Garbo is at her most alluring here, and the
growing off-screen passion between her and Gilbert permeates their
on-screen chemistry.
Pan
Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald
This brilliant film adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun’s famous 1894 novel Pan was scripted and directed by Harald Schwenzen, a talented young actor. It was his directorial debut—a masterpiece—and although he never directed another, Pan
is so exquisitely rendered and psychologically astute it has secured
Schwenzen’s reputation in cinema history. Schwenzen wrote in the film’s
original program, “The task we have given ourselves is to make a
beautiful and artistic pictorialization of Hamsun’s strangest story.
Outwardly, there is no strong plot in Pan which could possibly
tempt us, but the book is, with its powerful beauty and lyricism, so
rich in atmosphere, so characteristic and strong in its human
descriptions, that it offers both the director and the actors a very
special artistic task. If we have succeeded, through our images,
together with excerpts of Hamsun’s text, to give life to these people
and this atmosphere, as in the book, then we have fulfilled the great
task we set for ourselves.”
Amazing Charley Bowers
Live musical accompaniment by Serge Bromberg
Almost forgotten in the US until Serge Bromberg of Lobster Films revived
his oeuvre in 2010, Charley Bowers (nicknamed ‘Bricolo’ in France)
directed and acted in masterpieces of live action and puppet animation
in the late 1920s. In spite of being championed by André Breton
and the Surrealists for his extraordinary vision, Bowers’s films slipped
into obscurity by the end of the 1930s. Now, the surviving films have
been beautifully restored from original elements gleaned from archives
and collectors around the world. Films include: A WILD ROOMER
(1926, 24 minutes), NOW YOU TELL ONE (1926, 22 minutes), MANY A SLIP
(1927, 12 minutes), THERE IT IS (1928, 17 minutes)
Avant-Garde Paris
Live musical accompaniment by Earplay and Stephen Horne
Two extraordinary films from Paris in the 1920s illustrate the artistic
and intellectual ferment of the time when many of the world’s great
artists and thinkers convened in the City of Lights.
EMAK-BAKIA
(d. Man Ray, 1927, 16 minutes) American artist Man Ray lived in Paris in
the 1920s, where he created some of his most well-known works,
including several avant-garde films that added to his considerable
stature. (ARTnews named Ray one of the 25 most influential artists of
the 20th century.) Ray’s cinépoème EMAK-BAKIA will be presented with a
new score, composed by Nicolas Tzortzis and performed by the new chamber
music group Earplay. MÉNILMONTANT
(d. Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926, 44 minutes) The great film writer Pauline
Kael named MÉNILMONTANT her favorite film of all time, calling it, “an
exquisite, poetic 40-minute movie that is one of the least known
masterpieces of the screen.” Written and directed by the Russian émigré
Dmitri Kirsanov, who came to cinema as a cellist in a Paris movie house,
the film tells the story of two sisters (Nadia Sibirskaïa, Yolande
Beaulieu) in dazzlingly experimental style.
Why Be Good?
Live musical accompaniment by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
The vivacious comedienne Colleen Moore is perfect in the role of
aptly-named Pert Kelly. Pert’s a shop girl by day and a flapper by
night. The very image of a modern gal, she has a wild reputation but
lives at home with mom and dad. When the boss’s son Winthrop Peabody Jr.
(Neil Hamilton) falls for her, Pert gets the ax. But Junior is still
smitten and he devises a test to convince Winthrop Senior of Pert’s
virtue.
Norrtullsligan
Live musical accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble
Four female office workers share a flat and the experience of being self-sufficient in a man’s world. This
incandescent comedy, starring the legendary Swedish star Tora Teje, is
remarkably modern in its outlook and technique. Director Per Lindberg
includes an astonishing shot of endless rows of typists in a huge office
space that predates similar, more famous, scenes in King Vidor’s The Crowd and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment by years.
Sherlock Holmes
Live musical accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble
The silent film version of Sherlock Holmes starring William
Gillette has been found! Long considered lost since its first release,
the Gillette film is a vital missing link in the history of Holmes on
screen. Directed by Arthur Berthelet and produced by Essanay Studios in
1916, it was discovered at the Cinémathèque Française recently. By
the time the film was made, Gillette had been established as the
world’s foremost interpreter of Holmes on stage. He gave his face and
manner to the detective and inspired the classic illustrations of
Frederic Dorr Steele. Dynamic but calm, he played Holmes in the colorful
attire—bent-stemmed briar, ornate dressing gown, and deerstalker
cap—that has been identified ever since with the character. Just as
durable was Gillette’s distinctive bearing, preserved in the film: the
charismatic, all-seeing detective who dominates scenes with his
preternatural stillness. Booth Tarkington famously wrote after seeing
Gillette on stage, “I would rather see you play Sherlock Holmes than be a
child again on Christmas morning.” For the well-known Chicago bookman,
Vincent Starrett, Gillette was beyond criticism. But perhaps the most
telling accolade came from Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who had killed
Holmes off and thought he was through with the character. After reading
Gillette’s adaptation for the stage, he said, “It’s good to see the old
chap back.”
“Sir Arthur, you don’t know the half of it,” says Professor Russell
Merritt, the supervising editor of the film's preservation project and
member of the Baker Street Irregulars. “At last we get to see for
ourselves the actor who kept the first generation of Sherlockians
spellbound. We can also see where the future Holmeses—Rathbone, Brett,
Cumberbatch, and the rest—come from. As far as Holmes is concerned,
there’s not an actor dead or alive who hasn’t consciously or intuitively
played off Gillette.” The newly found Essanay production is not only Gillette’s sole
surviving appearance as Holmes. It is also the only film Gillette ever
made, a unique opportunity to view the work of a major American actor in
the legendary role that he wrote for himself. The film faithfully
retains the play’s famous set pieces—Holmes’s encounter with Professor
Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and the
tour-de-force deductions—and illustrates how Gillette wove bits from
Conan Doyle’s stories, ranging from “A Scandal in Bohemia” to “The Final
Problem,” into an original, innovative mystery play.
The Swallow and the Titmouse (L'Hirondelle et la Mésange)
Live musical accompaniment by Stephen Horne and Diana Rowan
This remarkable film spent 63 years on the shelf unedited before film
editor Henri Colpi discovered more than six hours of André Antoine’s
saga and trimmed the footage to an exquisite 79 minutes.
The dramatic family story is set on two barges, the Hirondelle and
the Mésange, as they bring coal and other supplies to areas depleted by
the recent war. Antoine’s pioneering film was depicted in an almost
documentary style, and his dazzling realism would take many years to
catch on.
The Deadlier Sex
Live musical accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald
After her father’s death, Mary Willard (Blanche Sweet) takes over his
business interest. Willard Sr.’s right hand man Harvey Judson (Mahlon
Hamilton) has more cutthroat business practices in mind, and Mary has
him kidnapped to protect her shareholders (and teach him a lesson). In
the end of this gentle comedy, Mary and Harvey propose another merger
that has little to do with business. Boris Karloff has a small role as
an unspecified foreigner.
100 Years in Post-Production: Resurrecting a Lost Landmark Of Black Film History
Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin
At a challenging time of segregation in the fall of 1913, a virtuoso
cast of African-American performer,s led by famed Caribbean-American
entertainer Bert Williams (1874–1922), gathered in the Bronx to make a
feature-length motion picture. After more than an hour of film was shot,
the unreleased project was abandoned by its white producers and left
forgotten until today. Found in MoMA’s Biograph Studio
collection, the seven reels of untitled and unassembled footage
represent the earliest known surviving feature with a cast of black
actors. Shot at locations in New York and New Jersey, the comedy centers
on Williams’s efforts to win the hand of the local beauty and boasts
among its highlights a two-minute exhibition dance sequence and a
cutting-edge display of on-screen affection between its black leads.
Additionally, nearly 100 remarkable still images of the interracial
production were recovered from within the unedited material, providing
evidence of an historic effort by a little-known Harlem theatrical
community to gain access to the developing medium of moving pictures. SFSFF
presents the Museum’s restoration of this lost landmark of film history
with an hour-long assemblage of daily rushes and multiple takes. MoMA
project leader, Associate Curator Ron Magliozzi, will narrate a
selection of unique photographs from the pioneering production and
present visual material explaining the film’s creation, 101-year
disappearance, and ultimate resurrection.
Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Soundtrack with a score by Carl Davis
The story of Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Ramón Novarro), whose brush with Jesus has significant consequences, Ben-Hur left its mark on history for being the most expensive Hollywood production of its time. Directed
and produced on a grand scale, it’s a must-see for the virtuosity of
its action scenes and the high impact of its storytelling style.
Unmissable is the world famous chariot race scene, for which a real race
was staged, filmed by 42 cameras, attended by the cream of Hollywood
and with cowboys and stunt men as the chariot racers.
Kevin Brownlow will appear on stage in conversation with Serge Bromberg directly preceding the screening!
Today, I received an advance copy of another exciting new book, Ziegfeld and His Follies: A Biography of Broadway's Greatest Producer, by Cynthia and Sara Brideson. The book will be published by the University of Kentucky Press, and is due out in June of this year. In my initial look-through, I noticed a couple of passing references to Louise Brooks, as well as a photograph. I am looking forward to reading the book. The Bridesons co-authored an earlier book, Also Starring . . . : Forty Biographical Essays on the Greatest Character Actors of Hollywood's Golden Era, 1930–1965 (BearManor).
Here is the publisher description: "The name Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867–1932) is synonymous with the decadent revues that the legendary impresario produced at the turn of the twentieth century. These extravagant performances were filled with catchy tunes, high-kicking chorus girls, striking costumes, and talented stars such as Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, and Will Rogers. After the success of his Follies, Ziegfeld revolutionized theater performance with the musical Show Boat (1927) and continued making Broadway hits—including Sally (1920), Rio Rita (1927), and The Three Musketeers (1928)—several of which were adapted for the silver screen.
In this definitive biography, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson offer a comprehensive look at both the life and legacy of the famous producer. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including Ziegfield's previously unpublished letters to his second wife, Billie Burke (who later played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz), and to his daughter Patricia—the Bridesons shed new light on this enigmatic man. They provide a lively and well-rounded account of Ziegfeld as a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lover, and an alternately ruthless and benevolent employer. Lavishly illustrated with over seventy-five images, this meticulously researched book presents an intimate and in-depth portrait of a figure who profoundly changed American entertainment."
"Ziegfeld was one of the most important theatrical producers of the early twentieth century, and the Follies (and its Girls) are still remembered today. He had a long-lasting effect not only on Broadway, but on social mores, and this book does a great job over covering that, in a fascinating way. The Bridesons know their stuff."—Eve Golden, author of Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway
"The authors have created a detailed, sweeping narrative of Broadway showman and entrepreneur Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., both as to his professional rise and fall and the full details of his complex, busy personal life. While there have been books devoted to him before, this new account is quite compelling both in scope and detail, and will certainly be the new definitive biography of the opulent life and times of the great Ziegfeld."—James Robert Parish, author of The Hollywood Book of Extravagance: The Totally Infamous, Mostly Disastrous, and Always Compelling Excesses of America's Film and TV Idols
I am excited to read this just released book from the University of California Press, The Parisian Avant-Garde in the Age of Cinema, 1900-1923, by Jennifer Wild. I hope to get a copy soon, as it seems the intersection of two big interests, early cinema and early modernism. Though a few of the Surrealists were devotees of Louise Brooks (namely Phillipe Soupault and Man Ray), and one Bauhaus affiliated artist incorporated her image into a montage, I don't think this book will discuss the actress, as the period it surveys is a little before Brooks' rise to fame. Nevertheless....
Here is the publisher description: "The first decades of the twentieth century were pivotal for the historical and formal relationships between early cinema and Cubism, mechanomorphism, abstraction, and Dada. To examine these relationships, Jennifer Wild’s interdisciplinary study grapples with the cinema’s expanded identity as a modernist form defined by the concept of horizontality. Found in early methods of projection, film exhibition, and in the film industry’s penetration into cultural life by way of film stardom, advertising, and distribution, cinematic horizontality provides a new axis of inquiry for studying early twentieth-century modernism. Shifting attention from the film to the horizon of possibility around, behind, and beyond the screen, Wild shows how canonical works of modern art may be understood as responding to the changing characteristics of daily life after the cinema. Drawing from a vast popular cultural, cinematic, and art-historical archive, Wild challenges how we have told the story of modern artists’ earliest encounter with cinema and urges us to reconsider how early projection, film stardom, and film distribution transformed their understanding of modern life, representation, and the act of beholding. By highlighting the cultural, ideological, and artistic forms of interpellation and resistance that shape the phenomenology of a wartime era, The Parisian Avant-Garde in the Age of Cinema, 1900–1923 provides an interdisciplinary history of radical form. This book also offers a new historiography that redefines how we understand early cinema and avant-garde art before artists turned to making films themselves."
"Jennifer Wild’s book is a major achievement, a monument in fact. The
book ranges across the entirety of the early twentieth-century French
avant-garde, from Picasso and Cubism to Dada and early Surrealism.
Developments in cinema, painting, poetry, and music are all tracked.
Wild's knowledge of the French avant-garde goes deeper and is more
all-encompassing than that of anyone I have read in her generation. But
in her 'horizontal' approach to the myriad ways in which the French
avant-garde responded to the parameters of what is here called the 'age
of cinema,' Wild achieves more than deep erudition: she has invented a
new way of crossing the fields of cinema studies and art
history."—George Baker, author of The Artwork Caught by the Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris
“The Parisian Avant-Garde in the Age of Cinema, 1900–1923,
disrupts a stabilized sense of ‘cinema’ that has shaped the history of
modern art and asks how that history would need to be rethought in order
for a more accurate and complicated version of cinema to come into
view. Jennifer Wild draws on a strong grasp of both modern art and film
historical scholarship, as well as an impressive amount of archival
research, to make important contributions to cinema and media studies,
art history, theater and performance studies, and literary
studies.”—Karen Beckman, author of Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis
“An extremely rich and wide-ranging study of the intersection between
avant-garde painting and literature and the emergent popular art form of
cinema in the early decades of the twentieth century. Magisterial in
both the breadth and depth of its analysis and meticulous in its
research, this book will have a considerable impact on the fields of art
history, film history, and French cultural history.”—Elizabeth Ezra,
author of Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur
"From
the effects of projection on early Picasso to the ubiquitous “Chaplin
effect,” cinema was woven into the fabric and design of French
avant-gardism. Jennifer Wild trains the light of cinema on myriad poets
and artists whose work glows anew, while they in turn used films as
visual “diagrams” or as a lethal “ballistics.” Bolstered by an
astounding bibliography and a wealth of anecdotes, Wild moves
effortlessly through Paris, like the movies themselves. You come away
astonished at the boldness of this culture, at the boldness of this
artform, and especially at the boldness of this scholar who has ingested
this period like few before her."—Dudley Andrew, Yale University
This vintage matchbox from Cuba features Louise Brooks (on the front), as well as Greta Garbo and Antonio Moreno in a scene from what I believe is The Temptress (1926). The matchbox recently sold on eBay, and measures 2 11/16 by 1 3/4 by 1/2 inch. It promotes cigarettes.
On March 28th, the Redford Theatre in Detroit is set to screen Pandora's Box,
the sensational 1929 silent film starring screen legend Louise Brooks.
For Metro Detroiters, it's a special opportunity to see one of the great
films of the silent era on the big screen of a restored 1928 theater.
Saturday's chance to see Pandora's Box is all the more special because Brooks and Detroit have something of a history.
Before she entered films, Brooks was a dancer. For two years, Brooks toured with Denishawn,
the leading American dance company of the teens and twenties. Led by
greats Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, the company's members were a who's
who of those who helped shape modern dance. During her two seasons with
Denishawn, the teenage Brooks danced alongside such legendary figures as
Martha Graham, Charles Weideman and Doris Humphrey.
Dance played an important role throughout Brooks' career. In the opening scene in Pandora's Box,
the actress performs a short dance -- a riff off something Brooks had
recalled from an earlier Denishawn routine. Later in life, Brooks would
remark, "I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned
to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act."
Denishawn visited
Detroit on two occasions -- first in March 1923, and then again in March
1924, where they performed at Orchestra Hall. According to newspaper accounts,
the company enjoyed large crowds and received favorable reviews.
Ultimately, it was as an actress that Brooks made an impression on the
Motor City -- especially its film critics.
In the 1920's, Detroit was a three-paper town. There was the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, as well as the now defunct Detroit Times. Also covering local arts and entertainment was a weekly called Detroit Saturday Night.
Each of these publications reviewed films, and each went out of its way
on more than one occasion to single-out Brooks. Their praise was more
than just the era's usual ballyhoo.
Charles J. Richardson of the Detroit Times, for example, reviewed The American Venus -- a 1926 romantic comedy
which first brought Brooks her first reviews. Richardson wrote, "Louise
Brooks, the former Follies chorine, makes her film debut in the
production and does well in a small role. This Miss Brooks just now is
the patron saint of all chorus girls seeking admittance into the sacred
ranks of screen players." Harold Hefferman, writing in the Detroit News, also noticed the young actress. He wrote, "Louise Brooks, a black-haired boyish-bobbed entry ... cuts quite a figure."
Hefferman would go on to lavish praise on the actress throughout the 1920s. The Detroit News critic nearly gushed while reviewing Brooks' next film, A Social Celebrity.
"Louise Brooks, possessing one of the most striking and expressive
faces ever to come to the screen, plays the heroine in a saucily
successful manner." Meanwhile, Richardson at the Detroit Times continued to express similar sentiments in his many reviews. Writing about the 1927 film, Rolled Stockings,
Richardson proclaimed "Louise Brooks, as usual, is delightful to gaze
upon." Back then, some critics wore their hearts on their sleeves.
The actress' admirers were not limited to the city's male critics. Ella H. McCormick of the Detroit Free Press also singled out the actress. "Louise Brooks is the nifty stepper," she wrote in May 1926. A month later, reviewing It's the Old Army Game,
McCormick observed, "W.C. Fields scored a splendid triumph in this
picture. A great part of the success of the offering, however, is due to
Louise Brooks, who takes the lead feminine part." In her review of Just Another Blonde
later that year, McCormick pronounced, "Miss Brooks is one of the best
brunette contradictions to the lighter hypothesis that can be found on
the silver screen."
In the mid-1930s, as her film career started
to fade, Brooks returned to dance -- and once again returned to Detroit.
With a partner, Brooks found work as a ballroom dancer in nightclubs,
theaters, and other Midwest hotspots.
In August 1934, Brooks performed at the Blossom Heath Inn
in what is now St. Clair Shores. Today, that venue -- located on
Jefferson Avenue between 9- and 10-mile road -- hosts weddings and other
events, but back then the Blossom Heath Inn was a popular road-house
just outside Detroit city limits.
At the time of her month-long engagement, both the Free Press and News
ran the following notice in their respective nightclub column. "Edward
Fritz, proprietor of the Blossom Heath Inn, announces the engagement of
the season's greatest floor show, headed by Louise Brooks, motion
picture star, and Dario, creator of the Bolero from the motion picture
Bolero. Several other new acts are included." It was a dénouement to a
remarkable career.
Within a few years, Brooks would appear in her
last film (a B-Western with John Wayne), leave Hollywood, and sink into
decades of obscurity. In the 1950's and 1960's, Brooks and her three
great European films -- Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, and Prix de Beauté -- were rediscovered. Today, this once forgotten actress is legendary as Lulu in G.W. Pabst's 1929 masterpiece.
In a thoughtful article in the Metro Times
in 2006, Michael Hastings wrote, "Has there ever been a more perfect,
more tragic, more mythic fusion of actor and character than Louise
Brooks' Lulu in Pandora's Box? The girl with the "black helmet"
hairdo may not have been German, and she certainly didn't go on a date
with Jack the Ripper, but just about everything else in Brooks' life
leading up to and following her signature 1929 role became, in some
weird, extrasensory way, the blueprint for director G.W. Pabst's
masterpiece of sexual suggestion."
Detroiter's will have a chance to see for themselves on Saturday, March 28th when the Redford Theatre (17360 Lasher Road) screens a 35mm print of Pandora's Box. John Lauter will accompany the film on the theatre's original 3 manual, 10 rank Barton Theatre Pipe Organ. Pandora's Box will be introduced by film historian and Detroit Free Press writer John Monaghan. A post-film discussion "about Brooks' lasting impact on film and fashion" will follow.