Upcoming Kansas Silent Film Festival

As readers of this blog know, Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas and grew up in Wichita, Kansas. That state hosts a notable, and long running silent film festival which this year takes place February 28 and February 29. Admission is FREE to the event, which is held on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka. More information HERE.

Underworld (1927), a film akin to Brooks' lost The City Gone Wild (1927) which features Love Em and Leave Em co-star Evelyn Brent, is among the festival highlights. Tracey Goessel, author of The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks, is the banquet dinner speaker. And the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, who have recorded their score for the Kino Lorber DVD release of Beggars of Life (1928), will be providing live musical accompaniment.

Louise Brooks inspired film The Chaperone shows in Australia

The Louise Brooks inspired film The Chaperone will be shown on Tuesday, February 25 at the Stanton Library in North Sydney, New South Wales. More information about this event can be found HERE.

The library announcement reads, "Join us @Stanton_Library for our Books to Movies screening of 'The Chaperone' based on the 2012 novel by Laura Moriarty about teenage Louise Brooks, who dreams of fame and fortune in New York City in the company of a watchful chaperone. All welcome!" Additionally, the library notes, "This friendly group meets to screen films based on both classic and popular books. And it is not necessary to have read the book! Filmic appreciation mixed with lively debate makes this event all the more interesting."

The Chaperone, produced as a film by PBS in the United States, is based on the bestselling 2012 book of the same name by Laura Moriarty, a Kansas novelist. Curiously, The Chaperone has received a lot of "love" in Australia, perhaps as much as the film received in the United States. The titular star of the film, Elizabeth McGovern, flew to Sydney were she introduced it at the Australian premiere. An earlier LBS blog on the Australian opening can be found HERE.

 via Facebook

Though Academy Award nominee Elizabeth McGovern, famous for her role in Downton Abbey, was the star of The Chaperone, many including myself felt actress Haley Lu Richardson stole the show. Richardson plays Louise Brooks in what I would describe as a bravura performance, one worthy of at least an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. Regrettably, she did not receive a nomination. Here is a slightly different, more briskly edited Australian trailer for the film.

I think it is wonderful that Australia has embraced The Chaperone and Louise Brooks' story. (A major retrospective of the actress' film was held late last year at the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Read more about it HERE. ) I hope a bunch of people turn out for the Stanton screening, and a bunch of people check out a copy of Laura Moriarty's fine novel. The Louise Brooks Society recommends both!

Diary of a Lost Girl, starring Louise Brooks, screens in Tulsa, Oklahoma

The once controversial 1929 Louise Brooks film, Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Saturday, February 8th. My apologizes for the last minute notice, but I was just made aware of this screening. More information about the event can be found HERE.

The Kansas-born Louise Brooks plays the title role — the “lost girl” — in Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, or Diary of a Lost Girl. The film is a sensational story of a young woman who is seduced and conceives a child, only to be sent to a home for wayward women before escaping to a brothel. Beneath its melodramatic surface, the film is a pointed social critique aimed at society at large. It is notable that this film screening is co-sponsored by Tulsa Kids.

Diary of a Lost Girl is the second film Brooks made under the direction of G.W. Pabst. The first, Pandora’s Box, was also released in 1929. Like Pandora’s Box, this second collaboration was also based on a famous work of literature. Diary of a Lost Girl was based on the bestselling book of the same name by Margarete Böhme. At the time of its publication, one critic called the book “the poignant story of a great-hearted girl who kept her soul alive amidst all the mire that surrounded her poor body.” That summation applies to the film as well. And like the book, the film was the subject of attack - criticized by various groups and ultimately censored.

Though Brooks' American films were shown in Tulsa in the 1920s and 1930s, I wonder if the German-made Diary of a Lost Girl was shown there earlier  - sometime during the last few decades? (Diary was not shown anywhere in the United States until the late 1950s, and not in 1930 as the Circle Cinema website suggests. In fact, the film was first shown in New York state, and didn't debut elsewhere until the 1970s and 1980s.)

According to a notice in the Tulsa World, “The Circle’s 'Second Saturday Silents' series of monthly silent films continues with an 11 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, screening of this 1929 drama starring Louise Brooks. Live theater pipe organ accompaniment will be provided by the Sooner State Chapter of the American Theatre Organ Society."

The Circle theater (located at 10 S Lewis Ave) bills itself as Tulsa’s Connection to Film History Experience. The Circle Cinema is Tulsa’s oldest-standing movie theatre. It originally opened in 1928 and now operates as the only nonprofit cinema in the area. As such, it celebrates creativity, the arts and filmmakers from around the corner and the world. Their regular series of silent films are shown with musical accompaniment played on a restored 1928 Robert Morton theatre pipe organ.

New G.W. Pabst DVD Blu-ray set features Louise Brooks

A new 16 disc set featuring the films of the Austrian-born German director G.W. Pabst has been released in France. And what's more, this gorgeous looking box set features Louise Brooks on the cover.

The set, released by Tamasa Diffusion and titled G.W. Pabst-Le Mystère d'une Âme, features 12 of the acclaimed director's best films, including Joyless Street (1925) and The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) as well as The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), The Three Penny Opera (1931), and Kameradschaft (1931). And of course, there is also Pandora's Box (1929) and The Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). The set, which runs 1289 minutes, focuses on Pabst's early efforts, but regrettably omits Secrets of a Soul (1926). Likewise, it includes Don Quixote (1933), but omits L'Atlantide (1932).

The set proclaims: "witnesses of his mastery of staging and his permanent inventiveness." The more than three and one-half hours of bonus material scattered over the various discs includes short documentary presentations, alternative versions, archival material and more. A bonus disc includes the 60 minute documentary Looking for Lulu. Also included is a 132 page book, Imaginary correspondence with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, written by Pierre Eisenreich.

I haven't yet seen this recently released set, but hope to acquire a copy soon. I need to save up my Euros! As of now, G.W. Pabst-Le Mystère d'une Âme seems only to be available via amazon France or directly (and at a better price) from its distributor, Tamasa.

Louise Brooks Frank Martin signed etching for sale

Besides Herbert Bayer's photomontage "Profil en Face" (1929), one of the most significant works of fine art to depict Louise Brooks is Frank Martin's 1974 etching of the actress. A copy has just come up for sale HERE.

Frank Martin (1921-2005) created this limited edition signed etching on copper in the early 1970s (which is somewhat early in the timeline of Brooks' post WWII rediscovery). It was published by Christie's Contemporary Art in 1974. 

According to the sellers' website, "Frank Martin was a printmaker, illustrator and teacher, born in Dulwich, southeast London. He read history at Oxford University and then studied at St Martin’s School of Art. After army service in World War 2 he gradually established himself as a freelance artist, although he taught at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1953-1980. He illustrated many books, including Charles Lamb’s Essays, 1963 and William Hazlitt’s Essays, 1964. From 1966 he turned his attention to a long series of prints of Hollywood actresses of the silent film era.

Originally a Ziegfeld Follies Girl, Louise Brooks made films in Hollywood in the late 1920s. Her high reputation as an actress rests on her performance as Lulu in Pandora's Box, made in Germany in 1928."

This print, which originates from an antique dealer in Yorkshire, is number 26 of 110. Antique's Atlas is asking $2161.50 or £1650.00, or €1958.55. I am not sure if the latter price is still current as the UK has left the European Union. (The Louise Brooks Society does not own a copy of this work of art: if anyone wanted to purchase it and donate it to the author of this blog, that would be splendid.) 

Personally, I very much like the artist's rendering of Brooks almost somber face, as well as the Cubist-like background, the latter of which suggests Brooks' modernity. My only criticism is the artist's handling of Brooks' breasts, which I think are too full, somewhat evoking the curved lines of the background.

Louise Brooks screening and booksigning at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles

The 29th of the month is turning out to be a special day for Pandora's Box and fans of the film's star, Louise Brooks.

Earlier today, on January 29th, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) screened the 1929 film as part of it's month long "Roaring Twenties on Film" celebration of flappers and all things Jazz Age. (Read Jay Carr's essay on the film HERE.)

And .... one month from today, on Leap Day February 29th, the American Cinematheque and Los Angeles Philharmonic have teamed up to show the film at the Egyptian theater in Los Angeles. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by composer and jazz pianist Cathlene Pineda along with trumpeter Stephanie Richards and guitarist Jeff Parker. Information and tickets made be found HERE.

But wait, there's more.... I have just been asked to sign copies of my Louise Brooks books at the Egyptian theater screening. I will have copies of Louise Brooks the Persistent Star on hand, as well as Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film and Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once Lost Film. I will also have a few last copies of the "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a  Lost Girl, a book which I edited and wrote the introduction to and brought back into print ten years ago. The famed Larry Edmunds bookshop will be handling sales. (This event marks my first book signing in Hollywood in a number of years - I signed books at Cinecon a few years ago. I hope to see everyone there!)

The American Cinematheque is screening a 35mm print courtesy of the George Eastman Museum, whose preservation was funded by Hugh M. Hefner. If you live in Los Angeles and have never seen Pandora's Box on the BIG screen, let this be your chance to do so.

About Pandora's Box, the American Cinematheque staes: "As Henri Langlois once thundered, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!” Here she proves it with one of the wildest performances of the silent era, as the dancer-turned-hooker Lulu who attracts men like moths to a candle. Politicians, titans of industry and the aristocracy are all part of the milieu Lulu inhabits as the story begins; her eventual descent to a criminal underworld underlines the fragility of German society between the wars. The combination of Brooks and director G.W. Pabst (“It was sexual hatred that engrossed his whole being with its flaming reality,” she once said) is still astonishing."

New Book on German Cinema features Louise Brooks

A book on German cinema has recently been published in Italy which features Louise Brooks. Cinema tedesco: i film (or German Cinema: the films) edited by Leonardo Quaresima, was published at the beginning of 2019, but just came to my attention when I received a message from one of the contributors, Giuliana Disanto. She wrote, "I'd like to inform you about a publication of my essay, "Il vaso di Pandora di Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Dalla parola alla visione," or "Pandora's Box by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. From word to vision." Disanto, who teaches at the University of Salento, added that her 21 page essay interest to the members of the Louise Brooks Society. She is right. More information about the book is available (in Italian) HERE.

According to the publisher in Italian: "Lungo l’arco della sua traiettoria, il cinema tedesco ha avuto a più riprese grandissimo rilievo, esercitando anche un ruolo di punta sul piano internazionale. Il volume ripercorre questa storia attraverso una selezione dei film che ne sono stati protagonisti: dalla stagione del “cinema d’autore” degli anni Dieci, in cui il nuovo mezzo si avvalse della collaborazione dei più noti protagonisti della scena letteraria e teatrale dell’epoca, al periodo weimariano, caratterizzato dalle invenzioni del cinema espressionista e dalla messa a punto di un complesso, raffinato sistema linguistico; dalla fase che accompagna gli anni del nazismo, in cui si fa portavoce delle parole d’ordine del regime, ma anche delle sue, ancor oggi dibattute, contraddizioni, al periodo apparentemente più provinciale dell’immediato dopoguerra, oggetto peraltro di riletture e riconsiderazioni in anni recenti; dall’exploit del Neuer Deutscher Film, che riporta il cinema tedesco a una posizione preminente nel contesto europeo, alla situazione degli ultimi decenni, orientata verso gli standard del racconto internazionale, ma non senza varchi verso modelli autoriali e sintesi tra questi due ambiti."

According to the publisher in English: "Over the course of its trajectory, German cinema has been important on several occasions, exercising a leading role on the international level. This volume traces this story through a selection of the star films: from the "auteur cinema" of the 1910s, in which the new medium made use of the collaboration of the best known protagonists of the literary and theatrical scene of the time, to the Weimar period, characterized by the invention of expressionist cinema and the development of a complex, refined linguistic system; from the phase accompanying the years of Nazism, in which it spoke the slogans of the regime, but also of its still debated contradictions, to the apparently more provincial period of the immediate post-war period, the subject of re-readings and reconsiderations in recent years; from the exploit of Neuer Deutscher Film, which brings German cinema back to a pre-eminent position in the European context, to the situation of the last decades, oriented towards the standards of international narrative, but not without gaps towards authorial models and synthesis between these two areas." The book includes essays by Paolo Bertetto, Francesco Bono, Lorella Bosco, Sonia Campanini, Simone Costagli, Giulia A. Disanto, Luisella Farinotti, Antioco Floris, Matteo Galli, Massimo Locatelli, Francesco Pitassio, Leonardo Lent, Luigi Reitani, Giovanni Spagnoletti, Domenico Spinosa, and Anita Trivelli.

Leonardo Quaresima, the editor, is Senior Professor at the University of Udine. In Germany, he curated, in particular, the revised and expanded edition of From Caligari to Hitler by Kracauer (2004), the Italian edition of The Visible Man by Balázs (2008), and the writings of Joseph Roth on cinema (2015). His other publications are focussed on Leni Riefenstahl (1985), Edgar Reitz (1988), Walter Ruttmann (1994).

Cinema tedesco: i film is available on amazon in Italy, France, Germany, England and elsewhere including either as a print book or as an ebook. I just ordered the ebook / kindle version from amazon in the United States.