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
In the course of my ongoing research into the world-wide presentation of
Brooks' films, I have found that that they were shown in what is now Ukraine,
which in the silent and early sound era was unwillingly part of Russia
(aka the former Soviet Union dba the U.S.S.R.) The results of my
research will be published in Around the World with Louise Brooks, which hopefully will be released later this year.
I have written about my
newspaper searches in the past, and was able to access one 1929 page from a newspaper in Chernivtsi. As a document, as a record of a place and time, this page has a remarkable history behind it. This city is located in what is now Ukraine, but in the 1920s was part of Romania. With its half-page, German-language spread on Die Buchse der Pandora, this is a notable find which shows just how wide-spread silent film culture once was.
I also found one other clipping which details when and where
the actress' films were shown in what is now Ukraine. Below is an advertisement
for a showing of Pandora's Box (known as Puszka Pandory or Dzieje Kokoty Lulu) which was published in May, 1929 in Chwila, a Polish-language Zionist daily from Lwów (or Lviv), a city in what is now western Ukraine, around 70 kilometers from the border with Poland. In the 1920s, Lviv was part of Poland.
I also did a search for Louise Brooks' name in Ukrainian, Луїза Брукс, and found this thumbnail image, which I was unable to access in a larger format.
Certainly, there is more to be found ....I say this because I do have a number of clippings
from nearby nations such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. For me, Ukrainian newspaper and magazine archives are difficult to access. For more on the silent and early sound era in Ukraine, see my earlier post on The Glories of Ukraine's KINO and Chwila film magazines.
I posted this blog because I support a free and independent Ukraine, whose existence is being threatened by Vladimir Putin and his Russian gang. Hey Putin, the Soviet Union is gone. Get over it.
The 1929 Louise Brooks' film, Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown in Toronto, Canada on February 27 at the recently reopened Revue Cinema, Ontario's favourite independent cinema. And what's more, the film will be shown on the big screen with love musical accompaniment by Marilyn Lerner. More information about this special event, along with ticket availability, can be found HERE.
Diary of A Lost Girl
GERMANY | 1929 | 112 mins | NR
“Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure
no matter what filmi nto a masterpiece…She is much more than a myth, she
is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema.” – Ado Kyrou, Amour-eroticisme et cinema
Based on Margarethe Böhme’s scandalous novel, DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is
Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst’s follow-up to the iconic
PANDORA’S BOX. No less sensuous, controversial, or provocative, DIARY
showcases Brooks at her most transfixing.
The story of an innocent young girl disowned and sent away by her
family after she is seduced and abandoned by her father’s assistant,
Pabst’s film never succumbs to melodrama, but rather turns the table on
the tormentors of women.
With showers of champagne set in the high-class brothels of Berlin,
DIARY is Weimar at its most powerful. DIARY is a silent masterwork
released at the era’s death knell and a film that further reinforced
Brooks’ status as an icon, even if it ended up being her last major work
and final silent film. – ALICIA FLETCHER
Digital Restoration Courtesy of Kino Lorber
Director: G.W. Pabst Cast: Louise Brooks; Fritz Rasp; Valeska Gert
DETAILS
Doors Open 30 minutes before showtime.
PRICING
General Admission: $17 Bronze/Loyalty Members, Students & Seniors: $14 Silver Members: $13 Gold/Individual/Family Members: FREE
For INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIPS ($350) and FAMILY MEMBERSHIPS, please email us at info@revuecinema.ca to get your ticket!
Prices include taxes. All membership benefits are available.
Want to learn more about Diary of a Lost Girl and the book that was the basis for the film? Check out the 2010 Louise Brooks Society publication, the Louise Brooks edition of Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl, edited and with a long introduction by Thomas Gladysz.
The 1929 Louise Brooks film, Diary of a Lost Girl,
is based on a controversial and bestselling book first published in
Germany in 1905. Though little known today, it was a literary sensation
at the beginning of the 20th century. By the end of the 1920s, it had
been translated into 14 languages and sold more than 1,200,000 copies -
ranking it among the bestselling books of its time.
Was it - as
many believed - the real-life diary of a young woman forced by
circumstance into a life of prostitution? Or a sensational and clever
fake, one of the first novels of its kind? This contested work - a work of unusual historical significance as well as literary sophistication
- inspired a sequel, a play, a parody, a score of imitators, and two
silent films. The best remembered of these is the oft revived G.W. Pabst
film starring Louise Brooks.
This corrected and annotated
edition of the original English language translation brings this
important book back into print after more than 100 years. It includes an
introduction by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society,
detailing the book's remarkable history and relationship to the 1929
silent film. This special "Louise Brooks Edition" also includes more
than three dozen vintage illustrations.
"Long relegated to the shadows, Margarete Böhme's 1905 novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl
has at last made a triumphant return. In reissuing the rare 1907
English translation of Böhme's German text, Thomas Gladysz makes an
important contribution to film history, literature, and, in as much as
Böhme told her tale with much detail and background contemporary to the
day, sociology and history. He gives us the original novel, his
informative introduction, and many beautiful and rare illustrations.
This reissue is long overdue, and in all ways it is a volume of uncommon
merit." - Richard Buller, author of A Beautiful Fairy Tale: The Life of Actress Lois Moran
Read
today, it's a fascinating time-trip back to another age, and yet remains
compelling. As a bonus, Gladysz richly illustrates the text with stills
of Brooks from the famous film. - Jack Garner, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
In
today's parlance this would be called a movie tie-in edition, but that
seems a rather glib way to describe yet another privately published work
that reveals an enormous amount of research and passion. - Leonard
Maltin Thomas
Gladysz is the leading authority on all matters pertaining to the
legendary Louise Brooks. We owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing the
groundbreaking novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl, back from obscurity. --Lon Davis, author of Silent Lives
It
was such a pleasure to come upon your well documented and beautifully
presented edition. -- Elizabeth Boa, University of Nottingham (UK)
When we think of the silent era in Europe, films from countries like France, Germany, Italy or the Soviet Union might come to mind. Each produced great actors and directors and landmark motion pictures. However, there were also vital film industries emerging elsewhere - in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc... This blog's recent series of posts highlighting Poland's KINO magazine suggest there is much to discover in other European nations - not only in their interest in American film stars, but in their own stars and emerging film industries. If you haven't already done so, be sure and check out
Ukraine's Online Periodical Archive, The Libraria, contains a number of periodicals for those who like me enjoy surfing the internet and browsing old newspapers and
magazines, even though I can't read a word (but I can "read" and appreciate the visuals). I wish to follow-up on those three Polish posts with a similar post highlighting Ukraine's KINO and Chwila magazines, which I was able to survey. (The Chwila covers continue after the break = "Read more.")
Let's begin with KINO magazine, which was dominated, seemingly, by Soviet actors and films? Unfortunately, because of the way this database is controlled, I wasn't able
to look into the magazines themselves - just their 109 covers. But still, there are some great covers to be seen featuring the likes of Buster
Keaton, Anna May Wong and others. Unfortunately, I didn't notice any featuring Louise Brooks. I have included a few other covers
simply for their design, which is similarly interesting.
Smart Set was one of the leading literary magazines during the Jazz Age. Founded in 1900 by Civil War veteran William d'Alton Mann, the magazine published a veritable who's who of American writers - everyone from Jazz Age stars F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and Anita Loos (each of whom Louise Brooks met or knew) to Frank Wedekind (author of Pandora's Box) and Jim Tully (author of Beggars of Life). The celebrated magazine also published mystery writer S. S. van Dine (author of The Canary Murder Case), Ben Hecht (contributor to The City Gone Wild) and Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon, who Brooks once met). Read more about Smart Set on its Wikipedia page, which contains links to old back issues.
Well anyways, this is all prelude to mentioning that Smart Set also hoped to lure young female viewers by utilizing the likes of actresses Louise Brooks, Clara Bow and Peggy Joyce.
On this day in 1969, the Blue Banner (the monthly student newspaper at Onondaga Community College near Syracuse, New York) published a letter Louise Brooks sent to student journalist James Rolick. The letter was a sort of explanation as to why Brooks cancelled her agreed to interview with the young journalist. The letter was published alongside a long profile of the actress by Rolick which included a couple of pictures sent by Brooks. This is amazing in that this took place relatively early in Brooks' "rediscovery."
The inaugural Cleveland Silent Film Festival and Colloquium, which kicks off this weekend, will screen Wings, one of the great films of the silent era. Along with Wings, the Festival is also set to screen Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), starring Buster Keaton, The Wedding March (1929), starring Erich von Stroheim, and Sunrise (1927), starring Janet Gaynor. Click to access the Festival's Facebook Page which contains information on the various screenings and concerts as well as ticket information.
On Friday, February 18, the newly launched Cleveland Silent Film Festival will screen Wings, a film which holds two unique distinctions; it was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. And secondly, Wings can rightly claim to have been the most popular film shown in Cleveland in the 1920s.
If
that isn't enough to pique your interest, this blockbuster film will be
shown with a newly recorded reconstruction of the lavish musical score
first heard at the film's 1927 premiere. That score was composed by J.S.
Zamecnik, a Cleveland-born composer widely regarded as one of the
leading film composers of his time.
