Diary of a Lost Girl

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

German filmmaker G.W. Pabst and Hollywood expatriate Louise Brooks re-team after the success of Pandora's Box for the silent film Diary of a Lost Girl. On the day of her confirmation, innocent young Thymiane Henning (Brooks) is given a lockable diary as a present. She's distraught because the housekeeper Elisabeth (Sibylle Schmitz) is leaving under curious circumstances and turns up presumably dead. Her duties are taken over by the conniving Meta (Franziska Kinz), who accepts the advances of Thymiane's pharmacist father (Josef Ravensky). Trying to understand Elisabeth's fate, Thymiane agrees to meet her father's assistant, Meinert (Fritz Rasp). She passes out, he carries her up to her room, and by the next scene she has borne a child by him. Meta snoops in Thymiane's diary and finds out it was Meinert's baby, so she suggests they get married. Thymiane refuses, so they throw her in a creepy reformatory for fallen women and leave her baby with a midwife. While in the reformatory, she meets Erika (Edith Meinhard), with whom she eventually escapes. To escape from poverty and homelessness, the girls then become nominal prostitutes in a brothel and are "sexually liberated." ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Audio: Silent
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Screen: Pan and Scan

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Louise Brooks - Thymiane Henning
       Fritz Rasp - Meinert, the Pharmacy Assistant
       Andre Roanne - Count Osdorff
       Josef Ravensky - Robert Henning
       Franziska Kinz - Meta
       Edith Meinhard - Erika
       Vera Pawlowa - Aunt Frieda
       Arnold Korff - The Elderly Count Osdorff
       Andrews Englemann - Director of the Reform School

• Director:

  G.W. Pabst

• Producer:

  G.W. Pabst

• Book Author:

  Margarete Boehme

• Cinematographer:

  Fritz Arno Wagner, Sepp Allgeier

• Production Designer:

  Emile Hasler, Erno Metzner

• First Assistant Director:

  Paul Falkenberg, Marc Sorkin

REVIEW:

• While it has been touted as wildly erotic and controversial for its mature subject matter, don't expect anything racy in Diary of a Lost Girl. It's still a German silent film from 1929, no matter how you look at it. The story is difficult to follow and much of the action is implied, but the images are haunting all by themselves. Louise Brooks is the reason to see the movie, as her porcelain skin and white gowns radiate against the oppressive dark backgrounds. Her short, sleek haircut and black eye makeup are totally glamorous, especially with that flapper-girl slouch and pouting face. She also gives an amazingly nuanced performance, conveying her distress with her worried eyes rather than the usually overdone acting style of the time. Supporting characters are also well done, with Andrews Englemann appropriately hideous as the giant bald bad guy at the reform school. Thymiane (Brooks) is always shown in a sympathetic light as an innocent survivor of a repressive and unfair system. Unwilling to accept her punishment, Thymiane would rather give her inheritance money to her little half-sister than allow her to suffer the same fate that she endured. Even when Thymiane rises up in status, she doesn't forget her roots, choosing to side with her old friend Erika (Edith Meinhard) rather than crusade for righteousness with other so-called respectable women. The 2001 Kino release of the film is beautifully restored with a new score by Joseph Turrin and nine minutes of previously censored footage. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi