Diary of a Lost Girl (book and DVD) starring Louise Brooks

If you are still looking for just the right gift for the Louise Brooks or silent film fan on your holiday list, may I suggest Diary of the Lost Girl, either the "Louise Brooks edition" of the book that was the basis for the film, or the recently released Kino Lorber DVD or Blu-ray. (Send me your order for both items within the next five minutes and you will receive an autographed copy of each item plus free shipping -- please indicate which format disc you prefer. Offer valid only in the United States.)

Need some convincing? Here are some of the reviews for each item. Don't hesitate. Quantities are limited!

The Diary of a Lost Girl (book)

“Most certainly a book for all you Louise Brooks fans out there! And silent cinema fans as well.” – Bristol Silents (UK)

“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, Movie Crazy

“You’ve done a beautiful thing.” – Barry Paris, author of Louise Brooks

“Read today, it’s a fascinating time-trip back to another age, and yet remains compelling.” – Jack Garner, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

“It was such a pleasure to come upon your well documented and beautifully presented edition.” – Elizabeth Boa, University of Nottingham (UK)

“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. 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

“An amazing forward that chronicles the history of Margarete Bohme’s book … a must for any silent film fan.” — silenthollywood.com

“Historian Thomas Gladysz has done the silent film community an interesting service: He has made available the original English translation of Margaret Bohme’s novel, The Diary of a Lost Girl. To fans of the beautiful actress Louise Brooks, this is a significant contribution indeed. What makes this new book so appealing is the way in which Mr. Gladysz has presented the vintage material. Featuring a scholarly introduction and numerous, wonderfully reproduced stills and rare advertisements, it is a pleasure to behold. It is also obviously a labor of love.” – Lon Davis, author of Silent Lives

Diary of a Lost Girl (DVD / Blu-ray)

"In this masterful restoration, from archival 35 mm elements, DIARY benefits from an incisive commentary by the director of the Louise Brooks Society Thomas Gladysz." -- Stephen Schaefer,  Boston Herald

"This DVD is the best possible restored version, and is beautiful in its imagery, and in Brooks' performance. This new release also benefits from a well-researched and often-fascinating commentary track by Thomas Gladysz, director of the Louise Brooks Society." -- Jack Garner, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle

"The Kino blu ray is a beautiful high def transfer.... The insightful audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz offers a wealth of fascinating information about the movie and about Ms. Brooks." -- James L. Neibaur, examiner.com

"G.W. Pabst’s silent German classic is intact, restored and looking great.... Thomas Gladysz’s commentary is thorough and informative." --  Glenn Erickson, trailersfromhell.com

"... a beautiful and masterfully made social drama. ... New to this edition is commentary by Thomas Gladysz, film historian and director of the Louise Brooks Society." -- Sean Axmaker,  www.cinephiled.com

"Diary of a Lost Girl was another torrid, atmospheric collaboration between American actress Louise Brooks and German director G. W. Pabst. The Kino Classics Blu-ray presents the film in a meticulous digital restoration to savor. Recommended.... The disc includes a feature-length Audio Commentary from scholar Thomas Gladysz, director of the long-standing website The Louise Brooks Society. This was a good, informative track revealing lots of interesting tidbits about the production, the lives of the other actors seen on screen, and Brooks' own recollections on the making of the film." -- Matt Hinrichs, DVDtalk

"Thomas Gladysz, director of the Louise Brooks Society, discusses the ambiguous nature of Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl, the film's visual style and its impressionistic aura, the relationships between the main characters, interesting details from the lives and careers of some of the principal actors, etc." -- Dr. Svet Atanasov, blu-ray.com

"The results are often excellent, with increased image detail that surpasses our hopes for this edition.... The supplementary material includes a new audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz, director of the Louise Brooks Society." -- Carl Bennett, silentera.com

"Diary of a Lost Girl' is a haunting work of filmmaking that I am very glad to see has made its way to Blu-ray in fine form.... Director of the Louise Brooks Society, Thomas Gladysz provides an interesting look at the film, discussing the style of the film, it's reception as well as some of the production details that are known about the film. A solid listen, especially if you're at all interested in learning more about Brooks herself." -- Matthew Hartman, High-Def Digest

"The movie is subtle and spellbinding—qualities not obvious in inferior prints. Like the earlier disc, it includes Brooks’ unremarkable comedy Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, a talkie short in lousy shape. A new extra is an informative commentary by historian Thomas Gladysz." -- Michael Barrett, popmatters

"If you think you’ve seen sordid, a characterization meant as a compliment, do not go through your movie life without seeing this second of two masterpieces that were filmed in almost boom-boom fashion by Germany’s G.W. Pabst — both starring misused-by-Hollywood Louise Brooks, whose legend is based near-exclusively on these collaborations. The most you can say against Diary of a Lost Girl is to concede its ranking just a sliver behind the previous year’s teaming on Pandora’s Box — that one about as good as the movies get." -- Mike Clark, HomeMedia Magazine

"Brooks is a remarkable screen presence, lighting up Diary's tale of an innocent girl taken advantage of by men and then punished for it.... It would be rare when any film ever was as good as the silent greats at their best, films like this one." -- Michael Giltz, HuffingtonPost

"After “Pandora’s Box,” director G.W. Pabst and actress Louise Brooks teamed up for one of the most stunning melodramas of the silent era. Beautifully restored to its original running time, the Berlin-shot film follows a naive pharmacist’s daughter as she is seduced and abandoned by her father’s assistant. Placed in a horrific home for wayward girls, she escapes only to wind up in a brothel. Way ahead of its time, “Diary” tackles provocative themes of sexuality and exploitation while providing Brooks with a role that helped defined her career. Extras: commentaries and a Brooks short from 1931." -- Amy Longsdorf, Delaware County Daily Times

Notes on Louise Brooks' notebooks

As the three previous blogs note, I recently took the opportunity to visit Rochester, NY and its world famous George Eastman Museum. The purpose of my visit -- a trip five years in the planning -- was to spend time at the museum with which Louise Brooks was closely associated for many years.

Back in October of 2010, I published a piece on examiner.com titled "Louise Brooks Journals to be Revealed, and Perhaps Published". My piece was occasioned by the announcement by the then George Eastman House that it had unsealed Brooks' private notebooks. Before her death, the actress had bequeathed her notebooks to the museum with instructions they remain sealed for 25 years. That was five years ago. This was my first opportunity to check out the notebooks for myself.

As my 2010 article stated, "Brooks kept journals from 1956 until her death in 1985. According to an Eastman House archivist, there are 29 research journals -- which contain her notes and thoughts while she conducted research for her book and other writing projects -- ranging in size from 20 to 120 pages. All together, these working journals approach 2000 pages of hand-written text. Notably, Brooks went back and reworked material in various notebooks over the years. She also added a table of contents to the cover of each volume."

I enlisted the help of Rochester resident Tim Moore, and allotted myself two and one-half days to read / skim / survey the material -- which literally was nearly 2000 pages of mostly handwritten, sometimes difficult to read material. There was also some typewritten material inserted into binders or pasted onto the pages of the notebooks. After I was done, I felt I barely scratched the surface. 

 

Inside the Eastman Museum, where I read Louise Brooks' notebooks

The material in the notebooks is largely just that -- notes. More than anything, Brooks compiled filmographies of many of the leading movie personalities of her time (this was in the day before IMDb, as well as before many of the film books we know were even published -- think the ubiquitous "The Films of ....." series). One almost gets the impression that Brooks had the idea to write some sort of grand history of film as a way of understanding her small part in its history.

Brooks also listed and took notes from the books she was reading. Often times she would transcribe passages out of biographies, memoirs, and film histories. Brooks recorded the titles of many if not most of the films she viewed and where she saw them, either at the Eastman House or on television. (Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, silent films and films from the early 1930's turned up on broadcast TV more often than they do today.) The actress also recorded key information about each film -- year of release, director, actor -- along with her thoughts on what she had seen.

There are passages on the Talmadge sisters, Garbo, Pola Negri, Clara Bow, Marion Davies, Tallulah Bankhead, Leni Riefenstahl, Humphrey Bogart, Grace Moore, Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty, and numerous others -- along with encounters with director Jean Renoir (at a party in Paris in the 1950s) and Roddy McDowell (when the actor came to her apartment to photograph her). In the margin, Brooks' recorded the fact that G.W. Pabst had called her on the telephone while she was living in New York City in 1948.

Brooks watched films by D.W. Griffith and Erich von Stroheim (her opinion on the director changed over time), as well as those starring Marlene Dietrich, like The Blue Angel and I Kiss Your Hand Madame. She also saw Dinner at Eight, William Wellman's The Public Enemy, and G.W. Pabst's Threepenny Opera. On October 29, 1959 she saw Empty Saddles, a 1936 B-western in which she had a supporting role. Brooks wrote "First film I ever heard my voice." Brooks was also taken with John Barrymore's performance in Maytime (1937). There were others, many others.

Brooks watched television programs and listened to the radio. If something stood out, she noted it. On September 28, 1960 she recorded watching Fred Astaire on NBC. Brooks also noted having seen the poet W.H. Auden on television in 1958 (two pages of her commentary on Auden followed), or listening to a local radio program on the critic H.L. Mencken. She also seemed to have a liking for Mitch Miller, and recorded hearing him on the radio at least a couple of times.

On occasion, Brooks was also a list maker. There was one listing the twelve painting she had completed up to that time. There was another listing books she intended to read about the 1920s. There was one noting "geniuses I have known: Chaplin, Gershwin, Graham, Thalberg, Gish, Garbo". There was another from the early 1970's listing where she had lived and for how long:

"18  Kansas
21  New York
9  Hollywood
16  Rochester
1  Europe - Chicago"

The notebooks also contain a number of clipping, which most often were obituaries of individuals she had known, including actor Addison (Jack) Randall, NYMoMA film curator Iris Barry, dancer Ruth St. Denis, and others. Usually, these clipping came from either Variety or TIME magazine, which she seems to have had regular access to. (Brooks also seems to have had access to a run of past issues of Photoplay magazine, as she often cites it.)

Brooks read a book about the composer George Gershwin, someone she first met and flirted with during her brief time with the George White Scandals, and recorded and dated an impressionistic memory: "at Scandals 1924 rehearsals George took off coat -- played in vest -- sometimes with a cigar in his mouth LB 1968". In her notebooks, she took notes on Gershwin's upbringing, on his many compositions, and on his early death on July 11, 1937, adding in parenthesis "[Two weeks before at the Clover Club George asked me to dance and seemed brilliantly healthy.]"

There was a good deal of surprising material. For a while, Brooks was deeply interested in existentialism, which was in vogue in the 1960s. She recorded reading a couple of books on the subject, as well as one or two by Jean Paul Sartre. She disliked Simone de Beauvoir, and said so in the pages of her notebooks. [Curiously, Sartre records in his own journals that one of his very first dates with de Beauvoir was when he took her to see A Girl in Every Port, which co-starred Brooks.]

Brooks also wrote her observations on Elizabeth Taylor and on Marilyn Monroe, thoughts on George Raft, and pasted in a clipping on Andy Warhol. She watched television coverage of Queen Elizabeth's 1957 visit to the United States and Canada, and wrote pages and pages about it. She also wrote many pages of material on Henry Kissinger, the Kennedys, and Zen thinker Alan Watts (which tied into her interest in existentialism). English writers John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll, and American novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are also referenced time and again.

On the outside of the Rochester Public Library, which Brooks visited often.

One of the binders which the Eastman House inherited from Brooks contains even earlier notes, loose leaf pages dating from as early as the 1940s. There are pages and pages of notes on the French philosopher Henri Bergson from 1941, on the English writer George Meredith from 1943, on Lord Byron and the qualities of great poetry from 1948, on Gandhi's Autobiography from 1949, on the letters of Marcel Proust from 1955. There are also scattered notes on art, and on modern painters.

Considering Brooks may never have achieved her high school degree (she left to join Denishawn after her sophomore year in school), these notebooks reflect an intellectually curious mind. Brooks was striving to understand. She was fascinated by authority figures -- either spiritual or political or literary or cinematic or romantic. George Bernard Shaw was a major obsession. It seems to me, Brooks attempted to understand the world and herself through the pages of literature, and in the biographies and histories of great individuals and momentous times. Her notebooks are a record of her striving.

I also came across this recipe: "Brooks' cookies 18 March 1973"

1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 table spoon milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
dates and nuts. lemon rind
350 degrees 45 minutes cut to squares

During my two and a half days reading Brooks' notebooks, I took lots of notes, and transcribed a few passages. That is all researchers may do. (Recording devices like scanners or cameras are not allowed.) The material above represents a summation of my notes.

Cut into the sidewalk in Rochester, not far from Brooks' Goodman
Street apartment and the Eastman Museum

Snapshots from Louise Brooks' Rochester, NY (part 3)

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Rochester, New York in order to conduct some research on Louise Brooks at the George Eastman House Museum. During my four day visit, I had the chance to meet friends, talk on the radio, and walk the streets of a city Louise Brooks once called home. I also spent two and a half days reading through Brooks' notebooks. (More on that at a later date.)

While I was in Rochester, I had the chance to visit a few sites of interest to fans of Louise Brooks. My thanks to Rochester resident Tim Moore who was my valued guide. All of the snapshots below were taken by myself, unless otherwise noted. Here are yet more of them, in no particular order.

No doubt Louise Brooks read this inscription on the front of the Rochester Public Library more than once. After reading
her notebooks which record her intellectual journey, I believe she held this notion close to her heart.

 

The entrance of the old Sibley department store building, where Louise Brooks once encountered two-time
co-star Richard Arlen (Rolled Stockings and Beggars of Life).

Another view of the George Eastman House. No doubt, Brooks walked the path past the house many times.

Brooks' grave in Rochester. The small picture of the actress was left by an earlier visitor.

Thanks to Tim and Cathy for driving to the grave on a cold, rainy day. (Photo by Tim Moore.)

Tim and Cathy provided the wreath. They were generous guides and are great fans.

Snapshots from Louise Brooks' Rochester, NY (part 2)

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Rochester, New York in order to conduct some research on Louise Brooks at the George Eastman House Museum. During my four day visit, I had the chance to meet friends, talk on the radio, and walk the streets of a city Louise Brooks once called home. I also spent two and a half days reading through Brooks' notebooks. (More on that at a later date.)

While I was in Rochester, I had the chance to visit a few sites of interest to fans of Louise Brooks. My thanks to Rochester resident Tim Moore who was my valued guide. All of the snapshots below were taken by myself, unless otherwise noted. Here are more of them, in no particular order.

The curtain at the Dryden Theater, where I saw the Marion Davies' film "Show People," with musical accompaniment by
the great Philip Carli. (Later we went out out drinks and a bite to eat.) Louise Brooks saw more than a few movies here.

Inside the Dryden with my new friend Emily Freitag. What a treat it was to meet here after being internet friends for years!
We sat in seats bearing plaques for James Card and his wife. (Photo by Tim Moore.)

A plaque outside the Dryden honoring James Card, founding curator of film at the Eastman Museum
(and Louise Brooks friend and champion).

A selection of books in the Eastman Museum gift shop.

Out to dinner with Rochester film critic and Brooks' longtime friend Jack Garner. He signed my copy of Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever - for which he wrote the intro. (My copy is also signed by author Peter Cowie.) Jack told me many stories of his long friendship with Brooks. (Photo by a young waitress who is interested in LB.)

Inside another local restaurant with a wall honoring local hero Louise Brooks. (Photo by Tim Moore.)

The wall of honor (though oops the top left image is of Clara Bow)

 

My trusted guide Tim Moore. Few know as much about Brooks' time in Rochester as he does.

One afternoon, we had lunch at Starry Nights. Much earlier, it was a liqueur store where
Louise Brooks may have got her gin. (Photo by Tim Moore.)

To be continued ......

Snapshots from Louise Brooks' Rochester, NY (part 1)

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Rochester, New York in order to conduct some research on Louise Brooks at the George Eastman House Museum. During my four day visit, I had the chance to meet friends, talk on the radio, and walk the streets of a city Louise Brooks once called home. I also spent two and a half days reading through Brooks' notebooks. (More on that at a later date.)

While I was in Rochester, I had the chance to visit a few sites of interest to fans of Louise Brooks. My thanks to Rochester resident Tim Moore who was my valued guide. All of the snapshots below were taken by myself, unless otherwise noted. Here they are, in no particular order.

Rochester Public Library, which Louise Brooks visited many times.

The one-time site of the Regent Theater, the first theater to show a Brooks' film in Rochester.

Under a different name, this is the restaurant where Brooks and Kenneth Tynan once ate.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Outside the Eastman Theater, where Louise Brooks danced as a member of the Denishawn Dance Co.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Inside the Eastman Theater. Brooks danced upon that very stage!

Outside Brooks' longtime Rochester apartment on North Goodman street, which is not far from the GEH.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Another view of Brooks' apartment building in Rochester.

Outside the newly renamed George Eastman Museum.

At my work station inside the George Eastman Museum, where I spent 2 1/2 days reading Brooks' notebooks.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

The Dryden Theater is attached to the Eastman Museum. Most all of Brooks surviving films
have been shown there, and the actress herself watched movies there.

To be continued ......

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Presents Day of Silents

With its many festivals devoted to so many different aspects of film, festivals goers in San Francisco are especially fortunate in their opportunity to take in movies others may have only heard or read about.

Take, for example, the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival "Day of Silents" on December 5th. The event features a rare thriller starring the legendary escape artist Harry Houdini, a more than century old travelogue from China, a silent era pirate film in Technicolor, and more—including the not-to-be-missed masterpiece starring the sublime Anna May Wong.

And what's more, each film features live musical accompaniment in the confines of the historic Castro Theatre. For complete details, visit silentfilm.org.

THE BLACK PIRATE - 11:00 am

The day starts with The Black Pirate (1926), starring Douglas Fairbanks and featuring the lovely Billie Dove. The film's many spectacular feats of derring-do include swordplay and underwater scenes—all in dazzling two-color Technicolor (one of its earliest uses). In this classic, Fairbanks plays a nobleman who takes the identity of a pirate to infiltrate and take revenge on the cutthroats responsible for his father's death. Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance writes, "Fairbanks is resplendent as the bold buccaneer and buoyed by a production brimming with rip-roaring adventure and spiced with exceptional stunts and swordplay, including the celebrated 'sliding down the sails' sequence." Author and Fairbanks expert Tracey Goessel will introduce the film; live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra.

AROUND CHINA WITH A MOVIE CAMERA - 1:00 pm

This compilation program takes viewers back to the days of the late Qing dynasty in Imperial China with a program of rarely-seen short films including travelogues and newsreels. See bustling and cosmopolitan Shanghai in 1900, visit Imperial Beijing in 1910, and cruise the picturesque canals of Hangzhou in 1925. Recently compiled from the collections of the BFI National Archive, the footage was shot by a diverse group of British and French filmmakers—some professionals, but mostly amateurs, including tourists, expatriates, and missionaries. Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

THE GRIM GAME - 3:00 pm

The Grim Game (1919) is the second of master escape artist and magician Harry Houdini's five silent films, and the first of two he made for Paramount. It has long been unavailable, as the studio retained only one five-minute sequence featuring the film's famous mid-air plane collision. However, thanks to a print held by a longtime Houdini fan, audiences can now see a restoration of the complete film. The Grim Game casts Houdini as a newspaper reporter who fakes his uncle’s murder so he can be convicted of it, only to have villains kill the man and kidnap the reporter's fiancée. Of course, it's all a pretext for a series of daredevil escapes, from Houdini’s breaking out of prison to his getting out of a straitjacket suspended from the top of a skyscraper. The Grim Game restorer Rick Schmidlin will introduce the film; live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

THE INHUMAN WOMAN (L’INHUMAINE) - 6:30 pm

Famous singer Claire Lescot (played by soprano Georgette Leblanc) is the "inhuman woman" of the title of Marcel L’Herbier’s elaborate 1924 fantasy. Lescot lives on the outskirts of Paris, where she draws men to her like moths to a flame. She is aloof, always. When it seems that Lescot is the cause of a suicide, her fans desert her. The filming of a concert where she's raucously booed is a bit of cinema history: among the attendees were Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Erik Satie, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound! The director's conception for the film's sets were no less ambitious. Painter Fernand Léger and filmmakers Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara had parts in the design. The film was recently restored by Lobster Films, who commissioned a new score to be performed by Alloy Orchestra.

PICCADILLY - 9:15 pm

After years of being typecast in Hollywood, Anna May Wong left for Europe in search of better roles. In British director E.A. Dupont’s Piccadilly (1929), Wong is mesmerizing as Shosho, a scullery maid who becomes a dance sensation and an object of desire for all who see her. In Piccadilly, Wong displays the cold ambition and manipulative sexuality of the classic femme fatale, while revealing—occasionally—the vulnerability of a young woman. This is hot stuff for 1929, especially the film's inter-racial romance: American censors cut a kiss. Gilda Gray and Charles Laughton round out the cast of the film, some of whose scenes were filmed inside London's famous Cafe de Paris (where Louise Brooks was the first person to dance the Charleston). Live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

Besides the special guests on hand to introduce films, a handful of authors will also be on hand to sign books between screenings. They include Tracey Goessel (The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks), Karie Bible (Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays: 1920-1970), and Thomas Gladysz (the "Louise Brooks edition" of Diary of a Lost Girl).

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival "Day of Silents" will take place at the Castro Theatre on Saturday, December 5. For more information and to purchase tickets and passes, visit silentfilm.org.

A ballet of Frank Wedekind's Lulu

If you are near the Oper Halle (Saale), Germany on December 4, 2015 you might want to check out the premiere of Lulu, a ballet enacted by Jochen Ulrich & the Tanzfonds Erbe, based on Frank  Wedekind's Büchse der Pandora and Erdgeist.

There are performances on Dec. 30th 2015; Jan. 23rd & 31st, Feb. 26th, March 4th and June 25th 2016. For more information see http://buehnen-halle.de/lulu

Gefördert von TANZFONDS ERBE – eine Initiative der Kulturstiftung des Bundes
Mit der Premiere des Balletts »Lulu« des 2012 verstorbenen Choreografen Jochen Ulrich, einem der entscheidendsten Wegbereiter des Modernen Tanzes in Deutschland, knüpft das Ballett Rossa an die erfolgreiche Vertanzung von dessen »Anna Karenina« an. Auch bei diesem Handlungsballett nach der gesellschaftskritischen Doppeltragödie »Erdgeist« und »Die Büchse der Pandora« des deutschen Schriftstellers und Dramatikers Frank Wedekind steht eine der faszinierendsten Frauenfiguren der Weltliteratur im Mittelpunkt. Als musikalische Grundlage dienen Kompositionen des Italieners Nino Rota zu den zwischen 1952 und 1970 entstandenen Filmen »Rocco und seine Brüder« und »Der Leopard« von Visconti sowie »Der weiße Scheich«, »La Strada«, »8 ½« und »Die Clowns« von Fellini, die sowohl groteske als auch dekadent neo-roman- tische Züge tragen. Hierzu erzählt Jochen Ulrich seine »Lulu« mit seinem unverwechselbaren ausdrucksstarken Tanzstil als Geschichte einer selbstbewusst mit ihrer erotischen Anziehungskraft spielenden Frau aus einfachsten Verhältnissen. Alle Männer, die ihr begegnen, erliegen ihren Verführungs- künsten. Indem Lulu deren Fantasien befriedigt, bringt sie ihre Liebhaber um den Verstand und treibt sie in den Tod. Auf der Flucht vor der Polizei landet sie in London, wo sie sich – inzwischen selbst emotional ausgebeutet – im finstersten Milieu prostituiert und die Begegnung mit dem Freier Jack the Ripper tragisch endet.

Musikalische Leitung Hilary Griffiths

Musikalische Leitung Robbert van Steijn

Inszenierung und Choreografie Jochen Ulrich †

Inszenierung und Choroegrafie Darie Cardyn

Bühne Katrin Kegler-Fritsch

Kostüme Marie-Therese Cramer

Dramaturgie Manfred Weber

Dr. Schön Michal Sedláček

Eduard Schwarz Johan Plaitano

Lulu Yuliya Gerbyna

Dr. Goll Martin Zanotti

Schigolch Dalier Burchanow

Ballett Rossa

Statisterie der Oper Halle

Staatskapelle Halle

Louise Brooks Society director Thomas Gladysz on NPR affiliate WXXI in Rochester, NY

Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society, will be talking about the actress and silent film star on NPR affiliate WXXI (Rochester, NY) at 1:00 pm (EST). The program can be heard on the radio in the greater Finger Lakes area of New York State. It also streams over the internet. Follow this link for more information and to tune in - http://interactive.wxxi.org/

Prix de beauté with Louise Brooks screens in Istanbul

Prix de beauté, starring Louise Brooks, will be shown at the upcoming 2nd International Istanbul Silent Cinema Days, running December 3 - 6, in Istanbul, Turkey. Organized by Kino Istanbul and hosted by Istanbul Modern, Pera Museum and the French Cultural Center, the festival will present pioneering examples of cinema. Each screening will be accompanied by live music.

More information about Sessiz Sinema Günleri / Silent Cinema Days can be found on its website or Facebook page.

Prix de beauté, a French produced film from 1930, will be shown as part of a series devoted to Divas. According to an article in Daily Sabah, "Louise Brooks's groundbreaking film Prix de Beauté (Beauty Prize) will also be screened as a part of the Diva Films section. Famous for her iconic haircut, the film focuses on individual freedom and it is about the turbulent events that women experience after winning a beauty competition."

Here is what the Sessiz Sinema Günleri website says about the film

Güzellik Ödülü – Prix de Beauté – Miss Europe / AUGUSTO GENINA / 1930 / Fransa – France / 113’ / Siyah beyaz – Black & white / DCP / Restorasyon – Restoration: Cineteca di Bologna
Müzisyen / Musician: Stephen Horne

Daktilograf olarak çalışan ve Andre adlı bir gazeteciyle ilişkisi olan Lucienne “Lulu” Garnier, The Globe gazetesinin açtığı güzellik yarışmasına katılır, birinciliği kazanacağı kesinleşir, ancak kıskanç Andre’nin itirazları üzerine vazgeçip evine geri döner. Lucienne’in peşini bırakmazlar, bu sefer bir film teklifi alır. Baştan reddedip, sözleşmeyi yırtar ama sonra Andre’yi bırakıp, yıldız olmaya giden yola adımını atar. Prix de Beauté, Louise Brooks’un Avrupa’da bilinen en son filmi. Avrupalı yönetmen Augusto Genina tarafindan çekilen filmin hikayesi, yine Avrupalı iki yönetmene ait: Fransız René Clair ve Avusturyalı Wilhelm Pabst.

Nezih Erdoğan

The Louise Brooks Society archives holds little in the way of clippings or advertisements for Brooks' film in Turkey. One of the few items we do have is this newspaper notice for Prix de beauté from 1931.